"What's up that way?"
"Not much. Antara Lodge, a golf course and a few cottages, that's about it."
"Thanks a lot."
As Adam reached his car, he heard Ted shout, "Airport. There's a small landing strip."
Airport. Dust trailed behind him as he tore down the country road. He was almost past the sign before he saw it. A gravel track to the right ended a Quonset-hut hanger. Past the end of the runway, a small red plane disappeared to the north.
A thin grizzled man, dressed in coveralls, walked towards Adam, a folded paper in his hand.
"You Davidson?"
"Yeah
"This is for you."
Davidson," he read, I didn't kill that woman. Check with Stanbury Council. I was at their pig roast that night. I got personal reasons for leaving. Morrison.
Personal reasons. What the hell were personal reasons?
"Do you know him?" he asked the mechanic.
"Just from here. Nothing else."
"Was he alone?"
"No, the wife was with him."
Maybe the brother could fill in the gaps.
Ted Morrison, when Adam found him, said his brother had lived in Canada for many years, with his Vietnamese wife. Denise had no papers for the United States, and he was afraid the Immigration service would find out about her if he had to answer questions. Denise was fragile, anxious and afraid. All she wanted to do was go back to Canada.
"She's all he has, Davidson. He'd do anything for her. He didn't kill the blackmailing bitch, though. He was at the pig roast till after midnight. Ask Ken Williams. He'll tell you. I was there too, so was Denise. I'm sorry about the officer he hit. I tried to stop him, and I called 911."
And that was the end of that. All the Morrisons had solid witnesses to their alibis for the time of the murder.
Ted turned back to Anne and Catherine.
"Anne, this is Ted Atkins, a reporter on our paper," Catherine said.
Anne reached from the stretcher where she lay to hold Ted's hand. "I know. We met before. Thank you. Catherine says without you I would have died. It is so lucky you were here."
A sob escaped her throat and her eyes filled with tears.
"You're welcome, Anne. I was only out here because I wanted to talk to you."
"As soon as I can, I'll call you," Anne promised.
Atkins watched the ambulance leave, feeling better about himself than he had since his wife and child had died. He shook his head as though clearing it of fog, got into his car, and drove away without another word.
A few hours later he finished two stories, all but the endings, one about the murders and blackmail, and the other, the scene at the bridge. All he needed were the endings and a conversation with Naomi Culver. He was sure his editor wouldn't run the first story without her permission as owner. He had no hope at all of David Culver allowing it.
Mrs. Culver agreed to see him that evening. Odd, he wasn't nervous this time. He waited for her in the small sitting room where he met her when he was hired. It seemed like an audience with royalty, that time.
But the lady who entered the room looked older, more tired and more worried than he remembered.
"Mr. Atkins, thank you for coming out here to visit me," she smiled. "What can I do for you?"
"My pleasure, Mrs. Culver. I wanted to show you two stories I have written for the paper next week. It's your paper and your family figures in the story."
"You wanted to give me a chance to kill the story?"
"No, I wanted you to know what's coming."
"And if I don't want them printed?"
"Then, I wouldn't work for you anymore, ma'am."
"I'd better read them."
She adjusted the reading glasses that hung from a delicate chain around her neck and read quickly, going back over an occasional paragraph. Finally, she put the papers on the pie crust table beside her, took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.
"You write very well, Mr. Atkins. I hadn't noticed you writing at this level before.
"Thank you."
"You have handled the story as well as I could have expected. I would like you to publish both when you have the ends of the stories."
"And David?"
"What about me, Ted?" asked David as he entered the room.
"What if you don't care for what I have written?"
"What does Mother think?"
"I think they are first-class articles, David, and I think there has been too much secrecy."
"So do I, Mother. So do I. Publish, Ted."
"Thank you."
Ted shook hands with his employers and left, still dazed by the change in their point of view.
Chapter Thirty-One
A disgruntled group met at the police station the next morning. Adam explained to his near-drowned and head-injured workers that not only had the guy who assaulted them got away but he wasn't the one they were after for the murder.
"What the hell, Adam," Pete said, forgetting the office rule. "Why all the attacks on us if he didn't do nothing?"
"Fear for the wife, Pete. That's all."
"Are we going to let it go?"
"Hard to find him, if he went into northern Quebec where lived before, off the grid, so the brother said. Let's find this Ames woman."
Anne came in despite Catherine's entreaties to stay home in bed. She wanted to find the murderer, whom she blamed, somewhat irrationally, for all the things that happened to her. Anne's temper was slow to rise, but anger and determination to stop this person before someone else died replaced fear. After a few minutes of work, Anne found the reference. A manifest on the St. George, out of Bristol, listed a B. Ames. So Jennifer blackmailed Beatrice, too.
"Anne, do you think Jennifer would use in. to mean information, instead of using info?"
"She did try to be as obscure as possible."
Adam paced between his office and the main office, waiting for something he could work with.
"Boss, I found a Beatrice Ames listed in a phone directory for Littleton," Brad said.
"Can you find out if there's anyone else listed for the address? I'm looking for her mother, and I don't know her name."
"Sure."
He resumed his restless pacing. There was no lead to follow until Brad got him an address or a name.
"Boss, I got another name. Desiree Almonte lives at that street address."
Adam stopped his pacing. "See if you can find a connection between Beatrice and this lady and any of the people here."
"Why, Adam?"
"Just a hunch. Pete, you go down to Littleton and see if you can find the Ames woman there."
During the rest of the morning, Anne and Brad searched through Jennifer's databases, trying to construct a genealogical link between Beatrice Ames, Desiree Almonte and anyone else on the lists in Culver's Mills. Fed up with feeling like an extra thumb, Adam drove over to ask Ada Warren about this newest family on his list.
Ada worked in her garden, raking sodden leaves off her lawn and out from under bushes in the border around her property.
"Hello, Adam," she said. "You must be stuck for gossip again. Come in for a glass of lemonade."
"Hello, Ada. You're right about that. I hope you can go back about fifty or more years for me today."
Settling into a chair in Ada's kitchen, Adam explained he needed information about Beatrice Ames and another woman called Desiree Almonte.
"I haven't heard Desiree's name for at least forty years. That was a local scandal you know."
"What did she do?"
"Oh, it wasn't her. It was her mother. Desiree's name before she married was Dupre, and that was her mother's name. Her father couldn't or wouldn't give her his name. Desiree was always very ashamed. Imagine giving a love child a name like Desiree."
The old lady shook her head in disgust or amazement.
"Did Desiree have any family?"
"I don't know. She moved away before she married and never kept in touch with anyone here. I'
m sorry Adam."
"No, thanks a lot. Just knowing her birth name will help Anne quite a lot."
"You persuaded her to stay, did you? Most of us thought you would."
"Do you mean my activities are common knowledge in your set?"
"Oh, now Adam, just those that are of any interest."
Ada beamed at him over her glass.
"I don't suppose you have any recent suggestions on who the murderer might be."
"Not that I've heard."
Adam said goodbye and walked down the path shaking his head. He was surprised Jennifer had kept her secrets as well as she had, considering Ada and her crowd.
The diner was clearing out after the lunch crowd when Adam arrived. Peg served behind the counter in spite of her new-found affluence. When he commented, she laughed and told him red tape took a lot longer than that to get through, and it would be a while yet before any money came her way.
After his lunch, Adam strolled back across the square to the courthouse. The sun was warm, birds were singing, flowers were starting to bloom in the beds in the square, and he felt oddly happy for a cop with an unsolved murder on his hands. The sight of Erin's shop told him why. The gone fishing sign hung from the door, so he walked on.
Anne and Brad were back from their lunch, and working on the information he had called them from Ada's. Anne told him she was constructing a family tree for the Culvers. She suspected Beatrice Ames might have been a twig from the family tree. Brad searched Jennifer's private databases for anything about Desiree.
Halfway through the afternoon, Brad called to Adam.
"Boss, I think I found something that might help Anne. It seems to be a copy of a birth certificate for Desiree. She was born here in Culver's Mills. The line for father is blank on this form, but Jennifer's notes say the original in Burlington lists the father's name. She identified him by one of those ship codes again. The initials are J.C., and the ship is the Galway again."
"Good. Anne, do you think you can do anything with that?"
"Yes, A Culver son born in 1900 was James. If we can find a James Culver or Calvert on the ship, I think you should try to look at the certificate."
As she spoke, Brad's fingers stuttered over the keys, calling up the ships' lists.
"Here he is. James Calvert shipped first class on the Galway in 1852."
"I think I should use a working theory that James had an affair with Desiree's mother, and left her to raise the child alone. Maybe I can find some mention of them in the newspaper files. Ada said there was a marriage," Anne said.
"I need to know if there is mention anywhere of Desiree having a girl and if we can find her first name," Adam said.
"I'll look for that now," said Brad. "Have you heard from Pete?"
"Nothing yet. He's still at the address for Beatrice in Littleton."
By the end of the day, they were no further ahead. Pete staked out the house in Littleton, but there had been no sign of anyone, least of all Beatrice Ames. Adam told him to come in, leaving one of the county deputies on night shift.
Chapter Thirty-Two
The next morning was hopeful: no rain, a few pale streaks of sunshine and the warmest temperature in a week. Adam sent Pete back to Littleton, while the computers at the office were active again, looking for the tie between Beatrice and Desiree.
By noon, Anne found a reference in a Births on Valentine's Day column, to little Beatrice Almonte, the only baby born in Burlington on the saint's feast and how lovely it was for Desiree, her mother to have a baby on the day dedicated to love. Anne figured the writer must not have known the story of Desiree's own birth or she would have avoided the topic.
"Good job,” Adam said. "As soon as I get word from Pete of any activity at the house, I'll go over. Is there anything more you think you can do?"
"Not with those records sealed. I don't know how Jennifer got her information unless she paid a bribe. The Vital Statistics office usually won't release anything about a living person without their permission." She paused before she went on to say, ”She wouldn't have hesitated to bribe someone."
At that moment the phone rang. Pete reported that a grey Ford with two women, one quite old, and one answering Beatrice's general description arrived at the house. Adam told him to hold off approaching them until he arrived but to follow them if they left again.
Littleton was a small village. An abbreviated main street containing one each of the necessary stores: a grocer's, a vet, a pizza parlor and a small branch bank. Adam turned left onto Dayton Street and followed along until a sign pointed into a small cul de sac called, improbably, Strawberry Fields Way. Pete was parked at the entrance to the street.
"They're still inside, boss. It's the third house on the left."
"Okay, let's walk in. We'll leave the cars here. I don't want to cause too much of a fuss until we have to."
The small suburban house was set the required distance from the street, with an asphalt driveway, and a shrub on either side of the 'picture window. Adam could see the curtain move as someone watched their progress up the walk. When he rang the bell, Mrs. Ames opened the door. She was thinner than when he had last seen her.
"Come in, Lieutenant Davidson," she said. "I've been expecting you."
"Thank you, Mrs. Ames." Adam and Pete followed her into a small living room, crowded with the accumulated furniture of a lifetime. Before she sat down, Mrs. Ames handed Adam a clear plastic bag, with a heavy blue ball inside. He found the weight the same as the ones he had seen in the restaurant.
"You kept it.”
"Yes."
Her face was older and more drawn than when he had seen her last, which must have been right after the murder. Waiting had taken quite a toll.
"Why?"
"If you had charged someone else, I would have come forward. I couldn't bear the thought that you might arrest an innocent person, especially one of the Culvers. They were good to me in their way." Her voice was almost inaudible, drained of all emotion.
"Is your mother here now, Mrs. Ames?”
"So you know that too. Dr. McPhail, I suppose. Yes, my mother's here. She's old, and I don't want you to frighten her. She had nothing to do with this at all."
An upright and almost fierce looking elderly woman entered the room in time to hear her daughter's words.
"That's not true, Beatrice. except for me, and my stupid pride, this never would have happened."
She sat down beside her daughter and took her hand.
"Beatrice only got mixed up with that woman because she was threatening to tell my story, and Beatrice thought I couldn't bear for it to come out."
"Can you tell me what happened? You know all your rights, but Pete will tell you again."
Pete pulled out his Miranda card and went over each item, making sure both women understood each one. Adam asked her again if she wanted to tell him, or after she had called a lawyer.
"I want to tell you now, Adam. May I call you Adam? It makes it easier somehow." When Adam nodded, she went on. "It all started one day about a year or a little less ago. I had just left a housekeeping job in Burlington and was looking for a new one. I had an ad in the paper. A woman called me, I thought in answer to the ad. That was Jennifer. She explained to me, very carefully and thoroughly that she knew all about the circumstances of my mother's birth, and she would make sure all my mother's friends would be informed if I didn't help her. I thought that would destroy my mother."
"She didn't want money?"
"Oh, no. She wanted me to take a job with the Culver's and gather information so she could blackmail them. She thought I should be happy to do this because the family had been so bad to my grandmother."
"Did she tell you what she was looking for?"
"Yes, she wanted anything anyone had to say about ancestors or old relatives. She wanted me to copy any old letters or documents I found. That was easy to do, because they have a copier in the office, and they're away a lot."
She paused for a long time
, with her head down and her hands wringing each other.
“I did it. I found something about an Indian ancestor in an old letter. She took it, and by the way David looked from then on, worried and furtive, I knew she blackmailed him. It was awful to watch. I couldn't stop her blackmailing David, but I wanted out."
"So you met her at the library."
"Yes. The family was away that night, so I called her and arranged to meet her at 10:30pm. She thought I must have more information for her. When I told her I wanted out, she said not only was she not going to let me out, she wanted me to leave the Culvers and start on another family she had found that she thought had some deep secrets. I pleaded with her, but she turned away laughing and picked up the phone.
She asked if she should call Edith. Edith is my mother's best friend. I was so angry; I picked up the paperweight ball from her desk and hit her as hard as I could. I didn't mean for her to die, but I did mean to hurt her. How could I do it?"
Her mother stroked her hair.
"It was my fault, dear. I should have told you it didn't matter if the whole world knew, after all this time. I'm the one who's an old fool."
Beatrice went on, "I tried to erase the files, so all the awful information couldn't be used again, but I got frightened and ran away." At that, both mother and daughter started to cry.
Adam waited until they had stopped crying, and sent Pete for the car. He didn't feel there was any point in taking Mrs. Almonte with them to Culver's Mills, so they left her forlorn figure staring out the window after them.
On the way in he called the station. He wanted to give Anne the chance to leave. She would be very upset to see Beatrice.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Adam invited Erin and Anne and Brad to brunch at Catherine's. A now familiar figure got out of a car in the drive as Adam arrived.
"Atkins, what are you doing here?"
Murderous Roots Page 17