The Thanksgiving Day Murder (14 page)

But where did she come from? Where had she gone? And how was I going to find out?

I heard Jack's car pull up the driveway just as the phone rang, a late hour for anyone to be calling. It was Sandy Gordon in a state of great excitement.

“I've been at it all night and I found it,” he said.

“The stamp?”

“The stamp and the piece of envelope it's attached to, including a postmark.”

“Sandy, that's wonderful. Where did it come from?”

“Indiana. I told you she came from Indiana. The postmark says Connersville. I've already checked it out. It's a small city east of Indianapolis and not far from the Ohio border. Of course, she may not have lived right in that town. The letter may just have been posted there.”

“I understand, but it's a good starting point. Is there anything else?”

“No, that's it. Will you go out there?” His excitement was so high, he sounded like a kid.

“Jack's just coming in the house. I'll talk to him about it and call you tomorrow.”

“Am I glad you saw my stamp collection.”

“So am I, Sandy. Have a good night.”

“It's starting to sound very promising,” Jack said when I'd finished my story. He was snacking on leftovers and we were sharing a pot of coffee and some cookies I'd bought before I got home this afternoon.

“Do I go out there?” I asked. “There must be a million Millers in the Midwest.”

“I think it's too soon for that. Give me a couple of good shots of her and I'll fax them out to Connersville and maybe some towns in the area. Let's see if the name means anything or the picture means anything.”

“She could have married a high school sweetheart,” I said. “There's a chance his family might recognize her even if she has no family of her own left. Or people she went to high school with.”

“Anything's possible. Just pick out a couple of good ones and remind me about her hair color.”

“It was brown originally.”

“What about her height and weight?”

“I'll show you some wedding pictures where she's standing next to Sandy. You're a better judge of that than I.”

He figured her for about five six and 125 to 135 pounds. He wrote down her age as thirty-three to thirty-eight, spanning the range of estimates.

“You know that if anything turns up, I have to give my information to the detective who's holding the case.”

“Sure,” I said. “I'm not looking for an exclusive on this.”

“How nice to work with an amateur,” Jack said with a grin. “Sure you're not looking for a collar?”

“Just a woman. Hopefully alive.”

“Don't get those hopes up too high.”

It wasn't easy to follow his suggestion. He called the next day after he had faxed the picture to several police and county sheriffs' departments and to the Indiana and Ohio State Police. He also spoke to someone at each location and asked about Natalie Miller. As I had surmised, Miller was a fairly common name—one officer said there were columns of Millers in the phone book—and no one had a
criminal file for a woman of that name. Nor was Natalie listed in a phone book, which didn't surprise me.

Jack got the name of a newspaper in the area from one police officer and called to see if I could place an ad, together with a picture. When he faxed the picture, the paper said it looked interesting but they'd rather have an original if he could overnight it. By that time Jack had had a number of copies made at a place in Brooklyn the police used, so we put together a few lines of copy and gave Sandy's business address and his home phone number for responses, and Jack arranged to have the ad run for three days, Sunday through Tuesday. Then I let Sandy know about it.

Late in the afternoon the phone rang and I heard Dickie Foster's voice and the kids giggling in the background.

“Is this Christine Bennett?”

“Yes, it is. Dickie?”

“Right. My husband reminded me of something. We talked about Natalie last night. He remembers meeting her in the elevator, too, and he also remembered that when she was with that guy, the one I told you about who stayed with her when we first moved in, she introduced him as her brother.”

“Did she give a name?”

“My husband thinks it was Terry. I'm just not sure. And frankly, I'm not convinced he was her brother. She may just not have wanted us to know she was living with some guy.”

“You mean she was embarrassed about it?”

“She may have been. Also she may have been worried about having someone stay with her that wasn't on the lease.”

“Dickie, I can't thank you enough for calling. And thanks to your husband for his good memory. If anything else occurs to you, I'd like to hear about it.”

“There is something else. Remember I told you the last
time I talked to Natalie was when she applied for a job? And then she went away and I never saw her again? I actually heard from her.”

“How?”

“She must have taken a little vacation around the time she moved. She sent us a postcard.”

“Do you remember where it came from?”

“No, but it could turn up. I'm a real pack rat, and things like postcards are hard for me to throw away. If I come across it, I'll call you.”

“That would be great,” I said. That was an understatement.

The weekend was quiet and Jack and I spent it together. We did some walking, took in a movie at the old movie theater that had recently been converted to four smaller ones, and brought home a pizza laden with everything you can imagine for a late dinner.

“So your ad gets published in Indiana tomorrow,” Jack said, sprinkling hot pepper flakes on his first slice.

“I don't think Sandy's leaving the phone for a minute.”

“If someone recognizes her, they'll call.”

“What if it's twenty years since she left and her looks have changed so much, no one recognizes her?”

“I've got an idea on that, but let's give it a couple of days. Anything new on your father and the mystery woman?”

“Nothing. But I have a new thought. We lived in the house I grew up in for about ten years, and my mother was very friendly with one of the neighbors, a woman named Elsie Rivers. If Elsie's still there, she might be able to remember something—if my mother confided in her, which is iffy.”

“Sounds like a good idea. She listed in the phone book?”

“There's a Rivers on the right street. It's funny, I haven't been back to the old house since my mother died. Aunt
Meg put it up for sale and took care of everything. Maybe I'm old enough to see it again.”

“Want me to go along?”

“I'd love it.”

“What's a Sunday for?”

Houses get smaller and trees get bigger. We had planted the dogwood in the front yard not long after we moved in, a small, wispy thing that produced lovely pink flowers in the spring and bright red berries in the fall, only not many of either. Now it had spread itself to shade most of the downstairs of my early home. Even leafless it had the grace and delicacy of a mature dogwood, and I felt my heart do funny things as I looked at it from the car.

Jack took my hand. “You OK?”

“I thought it was such a big house.”

“You were such a little girl.”

“I guess so.”

“Want to ring the bell?”

“No.” But I couldn't take my eyes off the house and the tree.

We sat in silence for another minute. Then Jack said, “How do I find Elsie Rivers?”

“Circle the block. She lived behind us, one or two houses down.”

We drove slowly to the corner.

“No,” the plump woman with big glasses said in amazement. “You're Francie's little girl? You're Kix Bennett?”

She wrapped her arms around me and I felt as though I had come home to my own, the prodigal daughter returned. A mite tearfully I introduced Jack and she pulled us inside to the warmth of her living room.

“Oh my Lord,” she said, “if only Francie could have lived to see this. Sit down, kids, sit down. Let me just push away the paper. I read the Sunday paper all over the living
room.” She gathered up sections quickly and dropped them on the floor where they were out of the way.

We accepted her hospitality because we couldn't refuse. She made tea—I remembered her and my mother sitting over teacups in the afternoon—and found half a coffee cake that was restored to life with the heat of a toaster oven. Then we talked, Jack listening more raptly than I had anticipated. I told her everything that had happened since the death of my mother. She wept as she remembered moments of their friendship, my mother's illness, her own last moments with me. I didn't linger or dwell. When we were up to date she was smiling just as I remembered her.

“So you're a married woman now with your own home. Oh, Francie would have loved it. And Eddie, too. Never was a nicer man than your daddy, Kix.”

I felt a little embarrassed. It wasn't going to be that easy, asking for secrets. “I was especially remembering him recently,” I said. “Someone mentioned the Thanksgiving Day parade and I remembered how he used to take me.”

“I'm not surprised. You were the apple of his eye. I'll bet your mom never went to those parades.”

“She didn't.”

“Too cold for her. She hated the cold weather. I think she had southern blood in her veins. She was always putting on a sweater when I was taking mine off.”

“I remember,” I said. “But my dad wasn't like that.”

“Oh, he couldn't be. He was always out meeting clients. I remember he used to go through shoe leather like nobody else.”

I felt comforted by hearing these little details of my parents' lives. As she spoke, I could see my mother checking the thermostat—never putting it higher because that would cost money—and then going for a sweater. And I remembered Daddy's shoes. I always wait till I get a hole in the second one to have them soled, he would say. How wonderful to hear their voices again, to see them as they were.

“Elsie, I'm going to ask you something a little odd, something you may know about. When my father took me to the parade, we used to meet someone there, a woman that I never saw anywhere else. She didn't work with Dad, but she may have lived near Central Park West in the Sixties where we watched the parade. Do you have any idea who she might have been?”

“Not the faintest. Why would I?”

“I thought maybe Mom talked to you about her.”

A shadow of a frown formed on her amazingly smooth forehead. She had round apple cheeks and fewer wrinkles than women ten years younger than she. “I don't think I understand,” she said.

“My father had one sister, my aunt Meg, who I lived with after Mom died. As far as I know, he never had any others. If he had some woman friend, maybe my mother knew her or mentioned her to you.” I couldn't come out and make an overt suggestion of a breach of my father's fealty.

“Your father was as good as they come, Chris, as loyal and true as a husband and father could be. That woman was just someone taking her kids and herself to the parade. There's no more to it than that.”

We stayed a little longer because she didn't want to let us go. Finally Jack took his detective's card out of his pocket, wrote my name and our home address and phone number on it, and gave it to her. She hugged us both and walked us outside the door, the cold apparently not affecting her. She stood there waving till we started up the car, then threw a kiss and went inside.

“Quite a gal,” Jack said.

“I'd forgotten the sweaters and the shoe leather. They were always so careful, always saving for a future that never came.”

“It became your future, and I think you're living the life they wanted for you.”

“I think she knows something, Jack.”

“That's why I gave her my card. If the spirit ever moves her and she feels she can't talk to you, she might call me at the station house.”

“And you'll tell me whatever she says.”

“Of course,” he said easily. “What else?”

There was no message on the machine from Sandy and I decided not to call. I would hear from him when he was ready, or when he had something to tell me. The call came after we had finished dinner.

“Nothing, Chris,” he said, sounding like the end of the world. “Not a single call.”

“Give the ad the whole three days, Sandy. People may not want to call on a Sunday.”

“This has just got to be the right place. Even if she didn't live there herself, the person who wrote to her knows her.”

“I think we're going to find her,” I said. I hadn't told him half the things I'd learned since Thursday, but I was very encouraged by the new information.

“I'll call you,” he said, and hung up.

“Nothing?” Jack asked.

“Nothing. I think the time has come to make a visit to St. Stephen's.”

Summer or winter, I never mind the drive to St. Stephen's Convent. There is always the rush of feeling when I see the roofs and spires in the distance. It was my home for fifteen wonderful years, and I left as a friend of the convent and a friend of every nun I had loved while I was there. The woman I knew best and whom I consider my closest friend to this day was Sister Joseph, now serving her first term as General Superior. While she is considerably older than I, she is distinctly of my generation, not of the one that preceded her. As an administrator she runs the convent the way a successful business should be run, and I wouldn't flinch at the thought of having her take over a large secular company and watch it grow, although that will never happen.

There is, of course, the other, more important side to her. When I was a member of the convent, Joseph was my spiritual director, and it was she who guided me during the difficult year of my decision to leave. It was also she who welcomed me as a bride last summer, and I've never had any doubts that she arranged the perfect weather that accompanied our beautiful wedding in St. Stephen's chapel.

As always, I started my visit with a walk around the convent grounds, which include the women's college I had taught in for many years. A bell rang as I approached the college campus, and a moment later students and brown-habited nuns poured out of the buildings, talking, laughing,
enjoying their youth and their education. I watched them with my usual feelings of nostalgia, hoping to see a familiar face.

“Sister Edward?”

I turned. A tall, thin girl bundled in a blue down jacket stood beside me. “Janine?” I asked hesitantly, irritated that my memory was failing me.

“Yes. Janine O'Brien. How are you? It's been a long time, hasn't it?”

“A year and a half. You must be graduating this year.”

“I am. I've applied to graduate school in a lot of places. I think I'll go on in English.”

“That's wonderful.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Unexpected things,” I admitted. “I got married last summer and I work at a couple of part-time jobs.”

“Married,” she said, as though the news had stunned her.

“I met him after I left St. Stephen's. It was all pretty surprising.” I looked at my watch. “I have an appointment with Sister Joseph. Are you walking toward the Mother House?”

“I've got to get back to the dorm.”

“It's been wonderful seeing you. Good luck. And I'm Chris Bennett now. If you want a recommendation for graduate school, Sister Joseph will give you my address.”

“Thank you.” She seemed flustered. “I may just do that. 'Bye.”

I watched her go, then turned and hurried off for my appointment.

“Whatever the reason, it's good to see you,” Joseph said, giving me a hug.

I had run the gauntlet downstairs, saying hello to everyone I ran into. The long table in Joseph's office was set with the expected tea and cups, some cookies that had the look of a nun's hands-on loving care.

“From the villa,” Joseph said. “No one will ever forget what you did for us at Christmas.”

“Not enough, I'm afraid,” I said with the touch of sadness that the memory of the past Christmas would always evoke in me. “The debt is all mine.”

“There are no debts among friends,” Joseph said with finality. “Sit down. I'm eager to hear about your case. You were chintzy with details on the phone, if I may say so.”

I sketched the story, as I always did when I came to Joseph for help. She had her stack of unlined paper and pencils beside her, and as we sipped tea and munched on cookies she took notes, interrupting from time to time to ask questions.

In a very literal way, I laid my case on the table, showing her pictures of Natalie and finally putting the ring of keys down between us.

“And where did these come from?” she asked.

“From a carton Sandy brought over before I agreed to work on the case. There were some books of Natalie's, inscribed by men but none of them a Terry, some cosmetics she used, their wedding album and some loose pictures, quite a few because Sandy must have taken every opportunity to photograph her.”

“So the carton was brought into the marriage, so to speak, by Natalie and added to by her husband.”

“That's the way it looks to me. He claimed never to have seen the keys, so I guess they must have fallen out of an envelope of pictures.”

“And which of the keys have you identified?”

“This small one opened the desk she sat at at Hopkins and Jewell. This one turned the front-door lock in the apartment she lived in five years ago. And this one Martin Jewell identified as opening the door of their old office.”

She looked at the remaining keys, the ones that probably opened suitcases. “So they represent Natalie's old life.
When she left Hopkins and Jewell to get married, she started a new key ring.”

“Which is probably in the purse she was carrying when she disappeared.”

“Let me think about these keys for a moment. She couldn't return the door key to Hopkins and Jewell because no one except Mr. Jewell knew she had it.”

“She could have returned it to him.”

“True, but perhaps she didn't want to be alone with him or perhaps she'd even forgotten about the key. Presumably she hadn't used it for some time.”

“If we accept his story, that's true.”

“And she couldn't turn it in to this Wormy person because Wormy doesn't know Natalie's been given a key.”

“Right.”

“But she also kept the key to her desk before she left.”

“It would seem so,” I said. “Maybe that key is the oversight. I've begun to think she kept the key to the office in case she wanted to check out her file again.”

“A bit of paranoia,” Joseph said.

“If there was someone in her past whom she had reason to be afraid of, she didn't want her new address and name in their files. I know they sent her a W Two form after she disappeared.”

Joseph made a note. “So they had to have her new name and address.”

“Until January of last year. Maybe she was planning to sneak back one night and get rid of it after tax season.”

“It's probably on a computer now, but from what you've said, she would have been knowledgeable enough to know the system and expunge any damaging information. Of course, we'll never know if she intended to.” Joseph picked up the ring of keys. “It's this key that concerns me most.” She held up the key to the door of the apartment near Gramercy Park. “It's marked Segal. That's the name of a lock that's used a lot in New York apartments, and if it has the
name of the lock on it, it's one of the original keys that was issued with the lock.”

“Are you sure about that?”

She pulled her own large ring of keys out and found one to show me. “I had this one made just a few days ago. It's a duplicate for a broom closet in the dormitory. The original is marked with the name of the lock, but this one isn't. This one is stamped Morgan Hardware, the hardware store in town. Just out of curiosity I asked the locksmith there about it when he was cutting it for me. He said duplicates don't have the name of the lock on them. They may have the name of the company that makes the blanks like Ilco, the International Lock Company, or they may be stamped by the hardware store or locksmith with their name, as mine is.”

I looked at Natalie's key. “So this is an original key, probably the one the landlord gave her or the locksmith if she had the lock installed herself.”

“My question is, how could she have gotten away with not turning in the key? If they're still using the same lock, they must have gotten a key back.”

“Maybe a roommate had a duplicate, or the brother.”

“Which means she returned the duplicate and kept the original. A little odd, don't you think? Well, perhaps it was more convenient to return the duplicate; it wasn't on her key ring. But I think it warrants a phone call, Chris.”

I agreed and wrote it down. “There's a possible explanation for why she only returned one key,” I said, thinking it over. “She didn't want the landlord to know she'd had overnight guests, male or female.”

“Good thinking. If she returned two keys, there might be questions. Funny, though, that she returned the duplicate, not the original.”

“No answer, Joseph. Not at this point anyway.”

“Let's see where we are. We have a good-looking woman in her thirties who, like many women, uses cosmetics and hair color to enhance her looks and make her look
younger, a woman who married the man of her dreams, lives in the house she has always wanted, and now is possibly pregnant with a child. Nothing unusual anywhere except that her life seems to start five to seven years ago and she is the best suspect for removing all evidence of her earlier life from her personnel record. Would she have removed those papers if she had married Martin Jewell?”

“She may have removed them quite early in her employment, early enough that her relationship with him was still going on.”

“So it wasn't a question of whom she married—or was intimate with—it was a matter of keeping her past a secret from everyone.”

“And one reason for doing that may have been in order to hide from one person who had the power to destroy everything she had built, perhaps even to kill her.”

“She certainly did an effective job of it. The police haven't found her, a private detective failed, and although you've come closer than anyone else, no one has answered your ad in the Indiana paper. All of which means she's well hidden or dead, and if she's dead, her body has been well hidden.” She looked down at her notes. “Tell me again what the neighbor, Dickie Foster, said.”

“They moved in as newlyweds about seven years ago, so they lived there for two of the years Natalie was there. Early on they met her in the elevator with a man she introduced as her brother, possibly named Terry. They had a casual acquaintanceship, but when Natalie moved out, after very excitedly telling Dickie she was being interviewed for a great job, she dropped the Fosters a postcard from somewhere.”

Joseph smiled. “And that somewhere may be crucial. What this seems to mean, Chris, is that the job with Hopkins and Jewell was a turning point in Natalie's life. She had no qualms about sending them a resumé and references, but once she was on their payroll, she wanted that information to go no further.”

“And she moved in the middle of the month, as though she couldn't wait to get out of the Gramercy Park apartment,” I added. “Maybe he came back. Maybe she married—or knew—this man in her early to mid twenties, got away from him, moved to New York, thought she was free of him. Then one day she sees him, or he finds her and she becomes terrified. She changes jobs, moves, leaves no forwarding address, hoping to escape from him.”

“It would seem she did for five years.”

“And then he saw her at the parade,” I said, feeling a shiver.

“What do you know about this man Martin Jewell?”

“Only that he seems very successful at his job, that he and his partner started with very little and have built up a lucrative business. Do you think he could be involved in this?”

“He sounds like a man who piles his plate a little too high. I'm sure there are men who manage to maintain several relationships at one time, but from where I sit, it sounds as though it can't be easy.” She pulled a sheet of paper closer to her. “Let's see who we have. The husband, of course, although both you and Jack don't think he's a serious candidate for murder. The nameless abusive husband or lover who's been after her for years. Or, as you suggested, perhaps a fitting but unexciting husband that she simply wanted to get away from.”

“In which case she's still alive somewhere.”

“Certainly a happier ending,” Joseph said. “Then there's the elusive brother or lover who may be named Terry. It would certainly be nice to find him, wouldn't it?”

“He might know a great deal about her, and if he cared, he would help. But I have no idea where to look or even if his last name is Miller.”

Joseph picked up the ring of keys. “I'm still bothered, Chris. I'm not sure I can put into words what it is, but this house key is a problem for me.”

“I'll call the super when I get home.”

It wasn't as easy as picking up the phone. I hadn't gotten the super's name and it hadn't occurred to me to ask for her phone number. But a call to Dickie Foster gave me both and a call to Mrs. Franco gave me the additional information that Joseph wanted.

“Sure she gave us the key. I can't remember now whether she handed it to me or left it in the apartment, but I got it back.”

“Was it an original or a copy?” I asked.

“I don't know. It looked like the real thing to me.”

I thanked her and was hanging up when she said, “You still there?”

“Yes. Is there something else?”

“I was talking to my husband about Natalie after you were here. He said some guy came around a couple of years ago asking about her.”

“Really? Asking what?”

“Where she moved to. Rich didn't tell him because he didn't know and the guy left.”

“Did he leave a name or address?”

“I don't think so, but he said he was Natalie's brother.”

Interesting. “Thanks for telling me, Mrs. Franco.” The news gave me a chill. Maybe someone had been looking for her for a long time, someone up to no good.

I didn't bother telling her I still had a key that opened that door. When this was all over I would see to it that the key was returned.

The next day I taught my class, came home, and prepared my lesson for the following Tuesday, just in case something happened and I didn't have much time. It turned out to be lucky that I did.