by Nic Saint
“Thanks, Mrs. Samson,” said Marge. Even though Mrs. Samson wasn’t exactly a friend of the family it was still touching she was prepared to jump to their defense like that.
“I mean, there are so many violent men out there, and I, for one, don’t blame the women who kill them. It’s self-defense, isn’t it? And with the law being on the side of the perpetrators, a woman has to take the law into her own hands or else she doesn’t know what will happen. That man might as well kill her one day if she doesn’t kill him first.”
“Mrs. Samson, I can assure you that my mother never killed anyone. When my dad died they had been divorced for many years, and it wasn’t my mom that killed him but a heart attack.”
“Uh-huh,” said Mrs. Samson, though it was obvious she didn’t believe a word Marge was saying. “Just look at that poor Nicole Kidman in that Big Fat Lies series.”
“Big Little Lies,” Marge corrected her.
“That’s what I said. Nicole bravely pushed her husband down the stairs because she had to, otherwise that horrible pig would have bashed her head in. Oh, yes, he would have, no matter what Meryl Streep has to say about it.”
“First of all, Nicole Kidman didn’t push her husband down the stairs,” said Marge. “And secondly, like I said, my parents were long divorced before my dad died. And also, my parents never lived in the house on Harrington Street. Tex and I only moved in there twenty-five years ago, and Mom only moved in with us ten years ago, when she felt the house where she was living had become too big for her and so she sold it. So you see, that body in the basement can’t possibly be connected to us. That body has been there from way, way before we ever moved in.”
“Uh-huh,” said Mrs. Samson, then placed a kindly hand on Marge’s cheek. “It’s so sweet of you to defend your mother like that. I just wish my son would come to my defense more often.” She retracted the hand, then said, chipper, “Tell Vesta that I’m on her side. Us women have to stick together, like just like those women in Fat Big Lies do.”
And she pottered off in the direction of the romance section, to load up on a fresh collection of bodice rippers.
Marge watched her totter off with a shake of the head. If the whole town was thinking what Mrs. Samson was thinking, they were about to face some difficult times.
Odelia arrived at the apartment complex on Grover Street and parked her car across the road. It was a nice new building, in beige brick, and it looked really modern, the way only new apartment blocks can look. There were six apartments, with balconies both front and back, one of which was Rita Baker’s. She stepped up to the front door and entered, already practicing her opening statement. She searched the name on the bell.
“Yes?” a melodious voice called out.
“Hi, my name is Odelia Poole. You probably remember me. I bought your house.”
“Oh, of course! Come in, Odelia.” And immediately the buzzer buzzed and Odelia hurried to push open the door.
Moments later she was mounting the stairs and when she arrived on the second-floor landing, Rita was already there, greeting her with a smile and open arms.
She looked exactly like Odelia remembered: a lady in her seventies, with a lot of soft white curls, and a kindly pink face. She looked a little older, her face a little more lined, but otherwise still the same kindhearted woman. Odelia had bought the house directly from Rita, without the intervention of a broker, which Rita had said she despised for the exorbitant commissions they extracted, and the way they kept raising the price and scaring off potential buyers. Rita had wanted to sell quick, and she didn’t mind knocking off a big chunk of the price when Odelia and her parents had expressed an interest.
“Hey, honey,” said Rita now. “How have you been? And how are your folks?”
“Great,” said Odelia as she stepped inside. “Mom and Dad, too,” she added as she removed her shoes at Rita’s instigation and accepted the slippers she handed her.
“I’m sorry about that,” said Rita. “I run a clean house, so I keep annoying people by making them take off their shoes.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine,” said Odelia. “I walk around in slippers at home, too. It’s a lot easier to clean, isn’t it?”
“It’s because I have so many carpets,” Rita said, indicating a nice Persian rug in her living room. “And hardwood floors. If it were tile, like I had in Harrington Street, I wouldn’t mind so much. Tile is so easy to clean. These floors and carpets, though.”
The house looked squeaky clean, Odelia had to admit. In fact it looked a lot cleaner than her own place, but then she was a busy bee, and so was Chase, and with four cats it was hard to keep up. Or at least that was her excuse and she was sticking to it.
“So what can I do for you?” asked Rita as she took a seat in the living room salon, where several couches were lined up around a big-screen television. Flowers were everywhere, and plants, and it was obvious Rita missed having her own backyard. She’d been an avid gardener back in the day, and had intimated it was the only thing about having a house that she would miss when she moved into the apartment.
“This is a little delicate, Rita,” said Odelia. “And maybe you shouldn’t hear this from me, but…”
Rita frowned. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
“My mom has issues with her plumbing,” said Odelia, deciding to take this from the top.
“Oh, well, I’m not sure I can help you with that. Back when we lived there, there were always issues with the plumbing. Old house, you know. What can you do?”
“I know. So she had Gwayn Partington come over, and he knocked out a piece of wall in the basement, looking for the connection to the water main.”
“Okay,” said Rita, not flinching or indicating she knew where this was going.
Odelia took a deep breath and plunged in. “He found a skeleton stuck in the wall. A skeleton that must have been there for several decades.”
Rita’s eyes went wide and she brought a hand to her face. “Oh, no,” she said.
“I think it’s your father, Rita. In fact, I’m almost positive that it is.”
“Dad,” said Rita in a hoarse whisper. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah. So I expect my uncle to pay you a visit as soon as they’ve made a positive ID, but I figured I owe it to you to give the news personally, as we have a connection and I…”
Rita nodded, speechless, her eyes brimming with tears. “Thanks,” she said.
“Do you have any idea how he could have ended up down there?” she asked.
Rita was shaking her head, still making valiant efforts to control herself. “No,” she said finally. “I mean, someone must have put him there, right? If it’s really him, someone must have…” She blinked and reached for the box of Kleenex on the coffee table. “I never thought he ran away, like Mom thought. He was too loving a father to do that to us.”
“Your mom thought he ran away?”
“She did. He’d gotten into some trouble at work. I don’t remember the details. Also there was talk about a fight he had with a work friend over a loan or something. So the police at the time thought he’d run away when he realized he couldn’t repay the loan. Dad worked with some unsavory characters, and some of those fellas wouldn’t have taken kindly to not being repaid when someone borrowed money from them, so…”
“But you never believed that.”
“No, I didn’t. Dad loved me—loved us. We were a very warm, loving family, and he wouldn’t simply leave us. Just… vanish without a trace and not give us a sign of life for all those years. Mom died not knowing what had happened to him, you know, and until the very end she wondered—we all did, actually. Me, Mom and my brother.”
“Tom. Does he still live around here?”
“Brooklyn. He’s a Wall Street guy. He’s retired now, though. In fact he’s thinking about giving up his apartment and permanently moving back to Hampton Cove. One of the downstairs flats is up for sale, and he’s seriously considering putting down an offer.” She wiped at her ey
es. “Oh, Odelia. Whatever I expected when I saw your face on the intercom just now, it definitely wasn’t this.”
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of such bad news,” said Odelia ruefully.
“It’s not bad news,” said Rita with a brave smile. “It’s good news. Now I know Dad never left us. Now I know what really happened, and how he was with us all this time.”
“Yeah, he was right there,” said Odelia softly.
“Amazing,” said Rita as she gave this some more thought. “How he was right beneath our feet all these years, and we didn’t know.” She directed a resolute look at Odelia. “You’re a private detective, aren’t you?”
“Um, not really. I’m a reporter for the Hampton Cove Gazette.”
“But you do some private detecting on the side, right?”
“I don’t have a license, so it’s not official,” she said. “I help out my uncle and my boyfriend from time to time. Civilian consultant, they call it.” She had a feeling Rita was working towards something, and she had a pretty good idea what it could be.
“Can you find out what happened to my dad? Please? For my sake and Tom’s? Someone must have put him inside that wall, right? He didn’t crawl in there all by himself and brick himself in, did he?”
“No, I don’t think he did,” said Odelia, treading carefully now. “It seems very unlikely that he would have done such a thing.”
“Exactly. So he was murdered. Someone killed him and had the gall—the impudence—to bury him in his own house, right under our noses—underneath the feet of his wife and family. Please find out who did it, Odelia. I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ll talk to Tom. He has some money saved up, and I’m sure he’ll agree with me to hire you.”
“No, please, Rita,” said Odelia, holding up her hand. “I’m not going to accept any money from you. I’ll look into your father’s death, not for money, but because I want to know, too. You see, people in this town like to gossip, and already they’re talking about my grandmother being the one who put that body there. So it’s important for me to find out what really happened, and to prove Gran innocent.”
“Your gran! How could she possibly be involved?”
“Oh, you know what people are like. Gran went through an acrimonious divorce back in the day, and then my grandfather died, so now they think she killed him and—”
“Buried him in the basement? That’s ludicrous. Your grandmother didn’t even live there back then. We lived there, and continued living there for many years afterward.”
“Exactly, which is why…” She swallowed. “Can I show you something?”
“Of course. I’m sorry for being so emotional,” said Rita, who seemed more composed now. “It’s been a long time, and I always thought I was over my dad’s disappearance, but this was a big surprise, and it’s going to be a big surprise for my brother, too.”
Odelia took out her phone and showed Rita a picture of the skeleton she’d taken.
The woman sat stony-faced for a moment, then burst out, “Oh, my poor daddy.”
“I’m sorry,” said Odelia, then flicked through to the picture of the brooch she’d taken. “Do you have any idea what this could be? It was found at the same spot.”
Rita took Odelia’s phone, and pinched the picture out with her fingers, making it bigger. “It looks like a brooch of some kind,” she said.
“It is. It looks very valuable. Diamonds, probably.”
Rita shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before. Definitely not ours. Dad was a gardener, and Mom was a stay-at-home mom until after he disappeared. We weren’t rich. And definitely not diamond-brooch rich.”
“So you have no idea how it could have ended up buried along with your father?”
“No idea,” said Rita, and Odelia could see that the woman wasn’t lying. She had absolutely no idea what that brooch was, or where it had come from.
Odelia put her phone away. “Thank you so much, Rita. Now, to get me launched on the investigation, tell me everything you can remember about your father’s final days, weeks, or even months. Anything you think might shed light on his disappearance.”
“On his murder,” said Rita quietly. “Yes, of course. Anything you need. Anything at all.”
Chapter 15
“You see, we were a loving and a warm family, as I’ve already said, but of course, like in any family, there were tensions,” Rita said as she got up. “Do you want some tea? I don’t know if you remember this, but I’m an expert on weird herbal concoctions.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Odelia, who did remember. And as Rita disappeared into the kitchen, she threw her mind back to the time Rita Baker had been her neighbor. She distinctly remembered Rita as a cool neighbor, who never failed to say hi, or to babysit when Mom and Dad went out on the weekends. Rita had quickly become a friend of the family, and Odelia had been in and out of her house often, spending many a night on the couch watching TV together. She remembered her as warm-hearted and fun. Happy to babysit because she didn’t have kids herself, even though she always wanted them. She never married, though, and the family she’d hoped to have never materialized. She had boyfriends, though, which Odelia would see sitting out on the deck having breakfast in the morning. Whenever Rita babysat she would never have a boyfriend over, though. She was strict that way, which is why Marge and Tex entrusted her with their kid so much.
“So I have the usual, rosehip and linden and chamomile,” said Rita, offering her a selection of teas. “And then I have my special blends,” she added with a smile, and spirited a second box into her hands. “This is the stuff I keep for special occasions.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” said Odelia.
“Nonsense. We’re old friends, you and I, and if I can’t share my special blend with you, who can I share it with? Besides, Tom, bless his heart, hates tea with a vengeance. Devil’s brew, he calls it. He only drinks coffee, and especially all of that horrible Starbucks stuff. I’m afraid Wall Street has seduced him to the dark side.” She laughed.
“Does he have kids?” asked Odelia, vaguely remembering Tom.
“No kids. Staunch bachelor, that one. And I don’t think he’ll change now. My little brother is seventy-one, if you can believe it. I can hardly believe it myself. Or the fact that I’m seventy-six now.”
Odelia smiled, and selected one of the oriental blends she hoped she’d like.
“Excellent choice, young lady,” said Rita primly, and disappeared into the kitchen again. Soon Odelia could hear the kettle boiling, and Rita called out “So how is your grandmother?”
“She’s fine. Acting a little weird from time to time, but nothing we can’t handle.”
“You mean she hasn’t changed? Why doesn’t that surprise me? Do you remember she used to read you ghost stories? And when you couldn’t sleep afterward you had to go and sleep with your mom and dad because you were afraid of all the monsters?”
Odelia laughed. She hadn’t remembered but did now. “Gran always loved stirring up trouble,” she said as Rita returned, carrying a teapot and cups and saucers on a platter.
She placed them on the coffee table along with a box of cookies. “So as I said, my mom and dad fought from time to time, but never anything too serious. The usual stuff, you know. I do remember they used to fight about my dad associating with the wrong crowd, as my mother called it. Those unsavory work friends I mentioned.”
Odelia picked out a cookie and took a sip from her tea. She closed her eyes. “This stuff is amazing.”
“Delish, right? I love it. Got it from a little tea shop in Manhattan that my brother once showed me. He knows I like my teas.”
“You and your brother are pretty close, huh?”
“Oh, yes, we are. I guess it’s the curse of being left without a dad. Either you drift apart as a family, or you stick together. We stuck together like glue after Dad disappeared. Became thick as thieves, the three of us, and now, after Mom passed, the two of us.”
“When did your mom pass?”
“Um, ten years ago? She was ninety-four, and doing great right up until the end. She was in a nursing home. Well, you would know. She moved there when your mom and dad bought the house.”
“She was there for a long time, then?”
“Yeah, fifteen years. She never thought she’d last that long, but she had a great spirit and was blessed with excellent health. So we were lucky we had her for so long, my brother and I.” She smiled as she remembered her mother with obvious affection.
“So… these unsavory people your dad associated with, do you think they could have had something to do with his death?”
“I have no idea. I just know it’s the first thing that comes to mind. Of course, they’ll all be gone now, so it will be hard to find out anything about them. I just remember he was away a lot at some point, and usually with the same crew of people. And Mom always forbade them the house, arguing she didn’t want their bad influence to rub off on us.”
“Do you remember any names? Places they used to hang out? Anything like that?”
Rita nodded slowly as she thought back. “Um… They used to have a place where they met after work, shooting pool and hanging out. The Rusty Beaver, I think it was called. It’s not there anymore, though. It’s a flower shop these days, of all things. And the names…” She shook her head. “I’d have to ask my brother. He’s aces with names.”
“Well, please ask him and I’ll see if I can find out some more about these people.”
“Do you think the police will look into my dad’s murder?”
“I’m sure they will. Even though it’s a cold case, they’ll want to know what happened.”
“It’s going to be hard, though, right? It’s been…” She closed her eyes, then nodded. “Fifty-five years. Hard to imagine it’s been so long. I was twenty-one when he disappeared, still living at home, and Tom was sixteen. My mom used to burn a candle for dad each year on the anniversary of his disappearance, telling us it might bring him back. A light to guide him home.” She smiled as tears trickled down her cheeks again. “I’m sorry.”