The Silver Anniversary Murder (15 page)

16

When I return from a trip, long or short, I try to make it up to Eddie. I know he loves Jack and Elsie, but I can tell that he misses me when we talk on the phone. I arrived in New York very late at night and had a long drive before I reached Oakwood. Jack was as welcoming as I had ever seen him, and for the rest of the night I basked in his hugs and kisses and his warmth beside me.

Eddie was overjoyed to see me at breakfast and couldn’t stop telling me everything that had happened while I was gone. I drove him to school and continued to the supermarket to replenish my refrigerator and shelves. Having spent several days being waited on and cooked for, I needed to return to my more normal mode. The early start to the day put me back home before ten with a full day ahead.

Now I needed to gather my thoughts and pass them on to Sister Joseph, the General Superior of St. Stephen’s Convent. She is my last resort when I am working on a homicide and I hit a dead end. And it was quite some time since I’d last visited the convent. The school year would now be over at the college, and I would be able to walk the paths I loved, sit in the shade of trees I had watched reach maturity during my fifteen years there, and visit all the wonderful women who had kept an eye on me.

Angela was on bells as usual, and we chatted happily for several minutes before she rang Joseph’s office upstairs in the Mother House.

“Sister Joseph.”

That voice cheers and warms me every time I hear it. “Joseph, this is Chris.”

“How good to hear from you. How are you? How are the men in your life?”

I went through the required reports and asked questions of my own. “And I saw Arnold Gold not long ago and he sends regards. I must get you all together at my house one of these weekends.”

“May I hope for a visit soon from you and those who tag along?”

“If you want just me, I can come tomorrow. If you want one or more of the tagalongs, it will have to be Saturday.”

“Saturday then. It’s not urgent, is it?”

I laughed. The reason for many of my visits have at least partly been to discuss a homicide with her. “Not urgent, but interesting. Very interesting.”

“I will sharpen my little gray cells. Will you join us for our midday meal?”

“Definitely. Eddie will come. I have to check with Jack.”

“We’ll have enough, I promise.”

With the appointment made, I read my
Times
and then sat at the dining room table with my notes. Ariana had given me every name, address, and phone number she had acquired during the trip, so I would be able to get in touch with people if I had questions. I gathered all these small notepapers from various hotel pads and paper-clipped them together. As I did so, I read each name. I recalled I hadn’t asked Aunt Junie if she had been to the Brinkers’ wedding. I was sure she had; her husband was brother of the groom, perhaps even his best man. If I could only find a friend of the Brinkers, someone they might have confided in, I might begin to see who had wanted to kill them. It had to be someone from their past.

I waited till noon to call Ariana’s Chicago number. There’s an hour difference in time and I didn’t want to wake her. But there was no answer and no machine to take a message.

Eddie and I had lunch together and decided to swim later in the afternoon. At one, I called Nick Brinker’s number in Portland. His wife answered.

“Jessie, it’s Chris Bennett calling from Oakwood, New York.”

“Oh, hi, Chris. You’re back home. Did you get everything worked out?”

“Not really. How’s your mother-in-law doing?”

“She was real happy to meet you and Ariana. Nick talked to her on the phone after you left. She forgot your name, but she remembered the visit.”

“Jessie, could you or Nick find out if she went to Ron’s wedding? And does she remember any names of people who were there?”

“I wouldn’t count on the names, but I’ll have Nick ask. When I call, sometimes she isn’t sure who I am. It’s so sad. She was such a smart woman until this happened.”

“Thanks, Jessie. Nick can call me at home, and if I’m not here, just let me know when a good time would be to call back. Unless, of course, she doesn’t remember anything.”

“He’ll probably ask her when he visits this weekend. She’s better in person than on the phone.”

So am I, I thought.

When Jack came home that night, he carried with him the final reports about the two bodies in the morgue. No traces of drugs were found in either victim, except for the chloroform in the woman’s body. Neither victim had any alcohol in their system and both had been murdered an hour or so after consuming a meal. Since similar food was found in both bodies, we could assume they had been killed around the same time. It didn’t tell me much, but at least the last of the information had come through.

About eight o’clock, the phone rang. Jack picked it up and took it into the family room so he could talk sitting down.

“Joe,” he said, “haven’t heard from you for a while.”

Joe Fox, I thought, judging by Jack’s many
uh-huhs
. “Sure,” he said at last. “She’s right here.” He handed me the phone. “Joe Fox.”

“Hi, Joe. Enjoying the good weather?”

“Well, I’d rather be playing golf but I’m enjoying the little bit of outdoors I walk through twice a day. How are things at your end?”

I hadn’t told him about my trip or who I had accompanied. “Everything’s fine here. I’m a swimmer, not a golfer, and I’ve been doing my laps in the afternoon with my son.”

“I envy you. Any closer to finding our killer?”

“I wish I could say I was. You’ll be interested to hear that I’m visiting Sister Joseph this weekend to see what she thinks.”

“Ah, your friend the Franciscan nun whom I gave a hard time to a couple of years ago.”

“The very one. I’m gathering my notes and thoughts and suspicions to pass along to her.”

“Suspicions?” he asked, homing in on the key word.

“Oh, Joe, it’s just a figure of speech. I have nothing and no one in mind. All I’m sure of is that those poor people were killed by someone who knew them many years ago, maybe as much as twenty-five.”

“Well, we have some interesting news. I’ve given it all to Jack, so there’s no need for me to repeat it. If you decide you want to have a look, give me a call tomorrow and I’ll set something up.”

Jack was grinning when I got off the phone. “They made quite a find,” he said.

“I’m listening.”

“Was there any furniture in the SUV you found in Madison?”

“None at all. There were suitcases and bags of personal items, all of which belonged to the victims. Ariana went through every piece of jewelry—tearfully, I may add— and the handbag and wallets and their contents.”

“Well, Joe’s got the furniture.”

“Really?”

“Probably not all of it, but a bunch. This guy must have filled the vehicle, driven to an out-of-the-way spot, and dumped it.”

“My goodness.”

“Someone called the police and said there was furniture scattered around on a piece of farmland a few miles from here. He wasn’t sure when he had last walked that way, so we don’t know when it was dumped. I’d guess around the time of the homicides.”

“Hmm.”

“Is that a meaningful syllable?”

“It is to me,” I said. “Joe said I could look at it—he didn’t say what it was—if I called tomorrow. I think I’ll take him up on it. So what could have happened to the rest of it?” I wasn’t really asking Jack. “You know, maybe he or they rented a U-Haul for a day and filled it with the bigger pieces. People who move around a lot probably don’t accumulate things the way Aunt Meg did.” Our basement still had cartons of her memorabilia seven years after she had died.

“Good point. You might check the rental places, although if these guys were smart, they got it somewhere else, maybe even in Connecticut. It’s not that long a drive.”

“I will make some calls tomorrow. And maybe more possessions will turn up in other out-of-the-way places.”

“So the case moves on.”

“Yes,” I said. “It does indeed.”

Joe Fox gave me an address when I called the next morning, and I drove up to White Plains to a police property storage depot to look at the Brinkers’ furniture. I had made arrangements with Elsie, promising that Eddie and I would swim when I got back.

Joe met me there. It was a large space, a kind of giant lost and found. A uniformed officer led us to an area that was taped off and marked PETER AND HOLLY MITCHELL. It seemed a long time ago that I had thought of the unfortunate couple by those names. Brinker was still my secret until Ariana claimed the bodies.

We skittered under the tape and I began rummaging through the drawers in a nice-looking old desk. It quickly became apparent that anything that might have shed light on the Mitchells/Brinkers had been removed. There were no checkbooks or bankbooks, no paid bills, no letters. I found pencils and pens and paper clips and the kind of generic materials every desk drawer is home to.

In the bottom file drawer, I found several folders, each with a different heading. One was CAR, and in it were records of when the car had been serviced. A quick glance showed regular maintenance. Another folder, marked MISCELLANEOUS, contained the expected assortment of unrelated materials. There were pictures of shoes and clothing, a photocopied street map of an area just outside Oakwood, magazine ads possibly related to Mrs. Brinker’s work, and several newspaper clippings.

I paged through them and found an article from the local paper detailing a local homicide I had worked on a couple of years ago. My name was underlined in blue ink and my phone number and address were written along the white space on the side.

“Look at this, Joe.”

He took the clipping from me and read it, then turned it to see what was in the margin. “Is it possible this is how she knew you?”

“You know as well as I, anything’s possible. And I still don’t know whether the victim or the killer called me. But yes, this could be the connection. Maybe Mrs.”—I stopped myself from saying
Brinker
—“Mitchell read this, clipped it, looked me up, and thought about calling me in connection with her problems. It mentions I’m an ex-nun— people always seem curious about that—and maybe she thought that would make me trustworthy.”

“I could have vouched for you,” Joe said with a glint in his eye. “Now why do you suppose they would leave that clipping in the desk?”

“For me to find. What was the purpose of calling me in the first place? There was nothing I could do. This may have been a person—or two people—basking in her final success. I’ve thought several times that if I hadn’t left the phone off the hook, we could have lost that phone number when we got back to my house. I’m glad I did what I did.”

“Anything else of interest there?”

I went through the rest of the folders but found nothing in any way connected with the homicides. I found no mention of Ariana, not that I expected to. Everything about her was in the Brinkers’ memory. “Doesn’t look like it.”

The night tables had only books and tissues in them. A couple of wooden chairs hid nothing and two lamps were smashed. I really wanted to confide in Joe all I had learned since the last time we’d talked, but I had promised Ariana my silence.

“So it looked like a good find but it produced nothing that adds a lot.”

“Well, I appreciate your letting me see this.”

“If anything turns up, I’ll give you a jingle.”

“Joe, someone in that apartment complex saw the Mitchells loading their SUV. Can you tell me who that was?”

“I’ll call you when I get back to my office. What are you thinking?”

“I’d just like to talk to them myself. If you don’t mind.”

“You know me. Be my guest.”

I made a small detour on my way home and stopped at the apartment office to see Larry Stone.

“Oh, hi,” he said, recognizing me as I walked in. “How’d that turn out? With the daughter?”

“It was very productive, Larry. I wanted to thank you for calling me last week. We made some progress but we haven’t turned it over to the police yet. She has some decisions to make. I know this is a long time for you to remember, but did you see a U-Haul or some other rental truck on the premises around the time the Mitchells disappeared?”

He shrugged. “Can’t say I did. Was it during the day?”

“I don’t know.”

“If it was at night . . .” He shrugged again.

“Thanks anyway.”

I was beginning to think that the Brinkers had not intended to move at all, that their killers wanted them moved out. If they didn’t pay their rent, Larry would come up one day after calling in vain and find they’d left and think they were deadbeats. So why call me and tell me a body would be found? It didn’t seem to fit.

At home I pulled out the yellow pages and found a long list of rental companies in the area. I went through them alphabetically, ticking off each when I was told there was no record of a truck or trailer having been rented in the time period I gave them. It had to have been before the day I arrived at the empty apartment. None of the times or truck sizes worked for any company I talked to. All in all, I decided that if the killer had rented anything, it was out of the range of my phone book.

That was it for Friday. I retrieved my son, suited up, and went off for a happy hour of swimming.

17

Our trips up the Hudson River to St. Stephen’s are always pleasant. Jack had agreed to join us and we took off after a late breakfast. The scenery never bores me although I’ve seen it hundreds of times. For this trip, we had a nice day, somewhat cooler than yesterday, perfect for a drive.

I had called Ariana several times since Thursday morning but she had not answered. I was starting to feel uncomfortable about it. She was a single young woman living alone and traveling with a huge amount of cash. Finally, just on the chance that I could pin down her arrival in Chicago, I called the car rental company and asked them to check whether the car rented in Madison had been returned to Chicago. I told them truthfully that the renter had dropped me at the airport and I hadn’t heard from her and was concerned about her safety.

The woman I spoke to put me on hold for a long time but when she came back, she said the car had been returned Thursday before noon at a Chicago location. I felt much better at that point, even though I still didn’t know where she was.

When we arrived at St. Stephen’s, Eddie hopped out as though this place was his second home and started running toward the Mother House. I dashed after him, leaving Jack to come at his own pace. As I reached the main door, a nun came out with Eddie hoisted in her arms. She turned and I recognized Sister Angela, whose telephone room is just inside the entrance.

“Chris, hello,” she called.

“Angela, he’s too big to be picked up.” I gave her a hug as I reached her.

“Angela’s my friend,” Eddie explained to me as he hit the pavement.

Jack brought up the rear and said hello to Angela.

“Lieutenant,” Angela said proudly. “It’s so good to see you.” Everyone at the convent keeps track of our lives and accomplishments.

We all went inside and made the rounds, touring the kitchen to say hello, then walking over to the Villa where the retired nuns live. Jack has never become completely comfortable among the sisters, having been educated by nuns as a boy. I’m sure he’s always a little afraid one of them will upbraid him for a recent misdemeanor.

Finally, I left the Villa and stopped at the chapel on my way to the Mother House. As usual it was quiet and cool. Two nuns sat praying in the second row on each side of the aisle. This was where we were married, where I had come for solace at difficult times, where I hoped I would always be able to come for the rest of my life.

As I always did, I lit three candles—for my mother, my father, and my aunt Meg. Then I sat near the back and did my own praying, happy to be there once again.

Jack and Eddie reached the Mother House a few minutes after I did. We were all to have lunch in the dining hall, after which I would go upstairs with Joseph to discuss the case.

“There she is,” I said, leaving my family for my friend.

“Chris, you’re here,” Sister Joseph said. “Angela didn’t tell me.”

“We were visiting. How are you?”

“Very well. My big news is that I am to go to Rome this summer.”

“Joseph, how wonderful.”

“It’s been the dream of my life. I feel well rewarded. That isn’t young Eddie, is it? He’s almost as tall as I am.”

It was a large exaggeration but he had put on a couple of inches since our last visit. After hellos, we went to the dining room and sat at Joseph’s table. The nuns stopped one by one at the bank of drawers in the outer room to pick up their napkins and any spices or salt substitutes they happened to need with meals. It struck me once again as I watched them that the average age was increasing, that I was one of the youngest people there besides Eddie. Even Angela was now in her thirties.

It was a fine lunch with home-baked cake for dessert. Most of the nuns came by during the meal to say hello and talk to Eddie. I hoped that when he became an adolescent, he wouldn’t reject these visits and the wonderful women who made them so enjoyable.

Afterward, Jack and Eddie and a couple of nuns took off with the baseball equipment Jack had brought along, and Joseph and I climbed the stone stairs to the second floor and walked to the end of the hall where her office was.

Like Joseph, the office never changes. A long conference table fills the front half, and her desk, cabinets, and other necessities find their place at the rear. She sits with her back to a large window that has a beautiful view. This always surprises me. I would prefer the view, but perhaps she’s afraid of being distracted.

“Our usual places?” she said as we entered.

“Sure.” I moved to what has become my side of the long table, at the far end near her desk.

“Your family looks wonderful,” she began.

“Your trip to Rome sounds marvelous.” She had described it during lunch. “I’m so glad you’re going.”

“Well, you got to see the Holy Land. Now, between us, we will have seen much of what’s worth visiting in this world of ours.”

We sat and I dug out my notebook with all the extras clipped and stapled to pages. On her side of the table were the usual well-sharpened pencils and a stack of unlined paper. I looked across the table and saw she was waiting for me to begin.

I doubt there have been many people who have received the kind of phone call that started everything off. Joseph reacted as I read the dialogue from my notes.

“This woman wanted to tell you of a murder that had happened or was about to?” She sounded incredulous.

“That’s what she said.” I told her about the empty apartment, the small bloodstain, the weeks of nothing happening, the finding of the woman’s body.

I pulled out the sketches of the victims and let her look at them. She smiled and ran her fingertip over the nail polish. It seemed to be the thing that everyone did. I went on about my search for the manicurist, the bank, the pharmacy. I talked about Gladys, the dear lady I had found in the last pharmacy, the one who had ridden in the big vehicle with them on several occasions.

And then there was the arrival of Ariana.

“Their daughter,” Joseph said.

“Yes, with a strong resemblance to her mother.”

“It took her a long time to check up on her missing parents.”

I explained where she lived, how there was no way to leave a message.

“They kept their existence known to as few people as possible,” she said.

“So we have learned. I haven’t even been able to leave a message for her in Chicago. No machine picks up.” I continued my tale: our visit to the lawyer in New York and then our trip to Madison, Wisconsin.

Joseph listened in obvious amazement as I described the letter Ariana retrieved from the lawyer Wally Keller and our drive to the house her parents owned. When I said the amount of money we found, she drew in her breath.

“And you left it there?” she asked.

“We had no choice. We wanted to fly to Portland, where her parents had been married and lived for a while. We couldn’t carry it on our persons.”

“I would think not.”

My travelogue continued: our discovery of Nicholas Brinker, Ariana’s first cousin, and our subsequent meeting with his mother. Then I mentioned the missing twin.

“Ariana had a twin,” she said reflectively. “If that’s true, how can you be sure you talked to the one who lived with her parents?”

It was a question I had asked myself after I returned from our trip. “You’re right, that’s a potential problem. Even DNA couldn’t tell us which is the real one and which the imposter. I know that it wasn’t Ariana’s voice I heard over the phone the day I got the original call, but I have to think that if the Brinkers knew there was an identical twin around, they would have worked it out to make sure the imposter didn’t inherit their estate.”

“The imposter,” Joseph said with a smile. “The good twin and the evil twin. How would parents know when they were infants that one was evil?”

I gave her Ariana’s explanation that perhaps one was born deformed in some way and given up at birth.

“Do you believe that?”

“Not really. There’s also the chance that they were fraternal twins. The word ‘identical’ was never mentioned.”

“Perhaps because this aunt’s memory is faulty. Go on with your story.”

I could sense that she was as uncomfortable with this development as I was. “Another reason I think Ariana is genuine is that if she weren’t, she wouldn’t have wanted me along on the trip.”

“Yes, I see that. The so-called imposter would just want to find the money and run with no one knowing that it existed. Of course, you haven’t been able to reach her by telephone. She may, indeed, have decided to disappear.”

That troubling idea had certainly come to mind in the last two days. I finished the narrative, pointing out that according to the rental company, the car we drove had been returned in Chicago.

“So you know she got that far.”

“Or the car did,” I said. “Yes, I believe she got that far. And I would suppose she’s opening accounts in banks where she can rent boxes to stash the money.”

Joseph began her questions with the phone call I had received. Could I have spoken to Mrs. Brinker in the past and not known it?

It was possible, I admitted.

“I rather think that call to you was staged, Chris. I think the murders had taken place and the killers wanted to set in motion the discovery of the bodies in order to recover the money you found in Wisconsin.”

“They didn’t get to Wisconsin till about the time we did.”

“Because the killer or killers didn’t know where the money was. They were waiting for you and Ariana to make a move. If they had been able to get the Brinkers to tell them, they would have left for Madison as soon as the Brinkers were dead. But the Brinkers died without saying anything.

“The killers knew there was a daughter and assumed she would go for the money. They had to bring her out of hiding, or wherever she was. If you investigated in your usual way, the daughter might surface more quickly. That’s why they called you.”

“So they waited around till the bodies were found and Ariana turned up. That was a long wait.”

“If they had waited twenty years to capture their prey, another week or two couldn’t have made much difference. The woman who called you—and I’m quite sure it was the killer, not the victim—wanted you to react. By the time she called, she and her accomplice had emptied the apartment of furniture, perhaps dropped a bit of blood in a conspicuous place, and dumped the bodies where they were sure they would be found quickly.”

“But they weren’t.”

“One can’t always judge these things accurately.”

“So I was watched,” I said, realizing that my family might have been in danger. I knew no one had parked nearby, as all the people on our street use their driveways and garages. Anyone parked at the curb is a guest or is making a delivery, and overnight parking isn’t allowed. But there are places as close as a block away where a parked car would not rate a second glance.

“I understand your concern.”

“And when we drove to the airport, they followed and found out where we were going and took off after us in the Brinkers’ car. I’m sure you could reach Madison in a couple of days if two people alternated the driving.”

“Or overnight. They could have been there the next day, Chris. These are resourceful people. They could have found you by calling hotels. How sure are you that no one saw you dig up the money?”

“Quite certain. We pulled the car into the garage and went out back through the house. It’s completely private back there. The trees and shrubs are old and thickly grown. And the proof is that they searched the house itself but didn’t dig in the backyard. They expected to find something indoors, maybe in the basement.”

“Or they were stopped before they could look outside.”

“Possibly. A neighbor heard the window break.”

“And the police were called.”

That explained the known facts. “They probably didn’t follow us to Portland though. Also their vehicle—the Brinkers’ car—was found at an illegal parking spot and towed. This is distressing.”

“And I gather no one has any idea where they are right now.”

I shook my head. “What you’re saying then is that all this is about money.” Somehow, I have never quite grasped that people might kill for money, even such a large sum.

“Not at all,” Joseph said, surprising me. “As we talk about it, I think the money may be part of it, but I believe there’s something much deeper, much more important going on here.”

I looked at her, not following. “You think this rampage will continue? You think they’re after Ariana?”

“They may be. And if she senses these people are hunting her down, that may be the reason why she hasn’t answered her phone.”

“I see. I wish she would call, just so I know she’s all right.”

“I expect you’ll hear from her, Chris. I think her desire to bury her parents properly will outweigh her other concerns. When she feels safe, she’ll come east and formally claim their bodies.”

I felt Joseph was right. “And she’ll have to see the New York lawyer again, although I suppose all that can be done by mail these days. My sense was that there’s more of an estate than what was buried in Madison. There may be bonds or money put away. At least that was the impression the lawyer gave.”

“May we go over what was found in that vehicle in Madison?” Joseph said.

I had a detailed list of what we had seen, including the contents of Ariana’s father’s wallet and her mother’s purse. I went through it, mentioning the pieces of jewelry.

“Did Ariana think any of her parents’ jewelry might be missing?”

“She didn’t say. It was a very emotional time, Joseph. I watched her touch each piece. She talked about some of them. When she eventually takes possession of all that, she may recall some things that are missing.”

“You said something about her father’s driver’s license being there but not her mother’s.”

“That’s right. I don’t know why. Her mother had a license. She was the one who drove them to work in the morning.”

“Yes,” Joseph said. And again, “Yes.”

“You see something I don’t see.”