The Happy Birthday Murder

by Lee Harris

  I called Laura after we’d had our coffee and went through the list of names of families we had visited, or tried to visit, during the day.

  “Alice Warren?” she said. “I knew a Barbara Warren once. She’d be about my age.”

  “Too young. Her daughter’s name is Michelle Franklin.”

  “No.”

  “Dave and Frannie Gallagher?”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar.”

  “Crider,” I said. I read from the piece of paper. “Joe and Bea Crider.”

  “No.”

  “Ever know a Pasternak?”

  “Never.”

  “Delia Farragut?”

  “Sorry.” She sounded sad.

  “Those are the ones we covered today. They live in an area where Betty’s son might have knocked on a door.”

  “I wish I could help you.”

  “I’ll check back when I have some more.”

  When I got off the phone, I called the number in Florida I had gotten from Delia Farragut. A woman answered.

  “Mrs. Crider?” I asked.

  “Yes. Who is this?”

  “My name is Chris Bennett. I’m looking into an incident that happened in the part of Connecticut you lived in some years ago.”

  “We haven’t lived there for a long time.”

  “I know that. Do you remember when a retarded young man was lost in the woods?”

  “Yes, I do. It was just before we moved.”

  “That’s the one. What do you remember about that?”

  “Well, I know he got lost in the woods and I remember they found him dead somewhere, but I don’t recall where. My husband thought about joining the search, but we had just agreed to sell the house and we had so much packing to do, he just didn’t have the time. Why are you asking?”

  “We think the young man’s death may not have been accidental. I just wondered if you might have come across him or if you knew anyone who did.”

  “I certainly didn’t.” She sounded a bit indignant. “And I don’t know anyone who did. If I knew, I’d have told them to call the police.”

  I knew I was antagonizing her. “What about the people right next door to you?” I asked.

  “The Pasternaks?”

  “Yes. I rang their bell today, but they weren’t home.”

  “I don’t know anything about them. You’ll have to talk to them yourself.”

  She was the second person who didn’t want to talk about them. “Do they both work?” I asked amiably.

  “I don’t know what those people do. And I have no interest in finding out.”

  “Thank you very much, Mrs. Crider. You’ve been very helpful.”

  “How did I help you?”

  That was a good question. “I’m trying to get the chronology of events straight. Do you remember when you closed on your house?”

  “Not the exact date. It was going to be the last of September, but we were able to get packed and get a mover a few days before that. The buyers were very anxious to get in quickly. I just don’t remember the date anymore.”

  I thanked her again and got off the phone.

  That left the mysterious Pasternaks. It wasn’t likely that Mrs. Crider, who had lived next door to them on a fairly lonely road, knew nothing about them. Still, they could be people who preferred to be by themselves. But the voluble Mrs. Farragut had also declined to say anything about them. I had their phone number, and I dialed it, hoping I wouldn’t trigger a barrage of criticism for invading their privacy.

  After three rings I got an answering machine message asking me tersely to leave my name and number. I thought for a few seconds, then hung up. I would try again tomorrow.

  —

  “Anything new?” Jack asked when we sat down together.

  “Nothing, I’m afraid. Laura has never heard of any of these names, and if one of these families knows something about Darby’s disappearance, they’re keeping it to themselves.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “Maybe some reaction when I mention the name Filmore. But I watched them all carefully and there was nothing. I asked Laura about all the people we talked to today and she said she’d never heard of any of them.”

  “You asked her over the phone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should do it in person and watch her face, too.”

  I didn’t like that. “Want to tell me why?”

  “The Linton woman is taking you around, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So she’s not afraid to be seen by any of the people you talk to up there.”

  “True.”

  “But if Laura Filmore is holding back on someone she knows in Connecticut, possibly someone in that area, you might notice something in her face if you hit the right button.”

  “I see.”

  “Have you given any thought to why her husband made that middle-of-the-night drive?”

  “Since he kept it a secret, I assume it had to do with something he was involved in that he didn’t want anyone to know about. Maybe he was in an automobile accident a few days before the party and he decided to settle it privately and not tell the police.”

  “So why did someone wake him up in the middle of the night?”

  “Because…maybe someone at the other end took a turn for the worse or felt his pain was worth more than what they’d agreed on.”

  “Did the police note any damage to his car?”

  I knew the answer to that one. Jack had seen the file over the weekend. “So it wasn’t that. Maybe it was a youthful indiscretion come back to haunt him. People come out of the woodwork and make threats, don’t they?”

  “Let’s push it a little,” Jack said. “Does anyone care anymore if a guy fathered an illegitimate child a long time ago?”

  I sighed. “I suppose I would care, but no, the general population seems to have a high tolerance for that sort of thing nowadays.”

  “Same thing with an ex-wife.”

  “I hope you don’t have one,” I said.

  “Why?”

  That stumped me. I tried to think of a good reason. We’re Catholic and he would have had to get a church annulment of his first marriage or our marriage would be invalid. He would have deceived me. He might be behind in alimony payments, and that’s against the law. But if none of these situations existed, how terrible would it be if Jack had been married before we met? I couldn’t imagine that he would be paying someone off to keep quiet about it. I said as much to him.

  “If you can be forgiving about something like that, I would think Laura Filmore could, too. What I’m getting at is this: Whatever Larry Filmore left the house for after his birthday bash, it must have been something big, something that would really disgrace him, maybe a felony that wouldn’t go away.”

  “And that includes murder,” I said.

  “Among other indiscretions.”

  “He did something,” I said. “He got away with something. It could have happened just before the party or a long time before. And somebody knows or found out.”

  “And has evidence,” Jack added. “Just knowing won’t cut it. When Larry Filmore robbed the bank, he left something behind that was distinctly his, and now it’s in the possession of a blackmailer.”

  “Very scary,” I said.

  “There could be signed documents, photographs of Larry with his hand in the till, so to speak.”

  “Or Larry Filmore standing over a body with a smoking gun.”

  “I think that’s what you’re dealing with, Chris.”

  “The question is: Does Laura know?”

  “Don’t know the answer to that. He could’ve confided in her or he could have decided to keep her out of it. In the first case, he told her where he was going when he left the house. In the second, he made up a story about trouble at the plant.”

  “And I have no way of knowing.”

  “You’ll find out. Just keep at it.”

  I didn’t have much choice.

&nb
sp; 12

  While I was eager to talk to George Reilly, the cop who had lost the suicide weapon, I decided to go back to Connecticut on Tuesday and take Eddie with me. Although I wanted to do some more walking in the woods, I could put that off for another time. Today I would just knock on doors as Betty and I had done on Monday and continue to ask the same kinds of questions. I had Betty’s maps and I knew how to get to the area, so it was just a matter of continuing along the roads that bordered the woods where Darby was lost.

  Before we left, I got a call from Pat Damon, Ryan’s mother, asking how Eddie was doing. I assured her that he was well over the problems the mysterious plague had visited on him. Apparently, she was working hard to find out what had caused the poisoning but still had no answer. I felt bad that she had such feelings of guilt and I told her I hadn’t even thought about it for some time. Eddie was fine and I was sure the other children were also.

  Then Eddie and I took off.

  —

  “We’re going to visit the people in this house,” I said to Eddie as I turned into a long driveway.

  “Who are they?”

  “Mr. And Mrs. Boynton,” I said, reading from Betty’s list. We were still on the north end of the perimeter of the woods.

  We got out of the car and went to the front door. A girl about twenty answered. When I spoke to her, she replied with a Scandinavian accent.

  “Mrs. Boynton just came home,” she said. “Maybe she has time to talk to you.”

  She left us in the front hall. The house was a large ranch, and I could hear voices from a room to the left. A few minutes later a good-looking woman appeared, a baby on her shoulder.

  “I’m Grace Boynton.”

  “Hi. I’m Christine Bennett. This is my son, Eddie.” I proceeded to ask whether she had lived here twelve years ago when Darby Maxwell disappeared.

  “Let’s sit down. Meta, can you take her? She’ll probably sleep now.”

  The au pair took the baby and went off, cooing to her charge as she went. We walked into a very lived-in family room with toys scattered everywhere and made ourselves comfortable. Eddie found a lot of toys and sat down with them.

  “I remember when that boy died,” Grace Boynton said. “We hadn’t lived here long. I was pregnant with my first child and I think I gave birth a day or two after his body was found. It was very upsetting.”

  “I can imagine. Did your husband take part in the search?”

  “No. I think the volunteer firemen did. And some of the service organizations. He probably would have if I hadn’t been so nervous about having my first child. She was a little late and I was afraid I’d go into labor and he wouldn’t be here.”

  “I understand. Did you ever hear any talk over the years about that boy?”

  “After it happened, there was a lot of talk, sympathetic talk. But that was all. Has something happened?”

  I gave her the explanation for why I was looking into the tragedy.

  “The boy died of exposure,” she said. “I don’t think there was any indication he’d been harmed.”

  “You’re right; there wasn’t. It’s just that some new information has come to light. Tell me, do you know anyone named Pasternak that lives about a half mile from here?”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Have you ever known Larry Filmore and his wife, Laura?”

  She thought a moment. “Can’t say I have.”

  “The people next door to you, have they lived here long?”

  “Two years. They built the house themselves. Took a long time doing it, maybe two or three years. They worked mostly weekends on it and vacations. They did quite a job.”

  “So they wouldn’t have been here twelve years ago.” “They lived somewhere else in Connecticut; I forget where.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Boynton.” I got up and told Eddie it was time to go.

  “What new information is there about the retarded boy?” she asked.

  “We think he may have spent some time in someone’s house during the days he was missing.”

  “You mean he was kept somewhere against his will?”

  “Possibly.”

  “That’s very frightening. I don’t know what your information is, but a lot of houses around here have an old barn out back or a caretaker’s house or an artist’s studio. Maybe the boy just went into a building like that to get out of the cold. No one may even have known he was there.”

  “That’s possible. I guess I should be looking for barns and studios.”

  “You should,” she said. “They’re all over the place.”

  We left and I drove down the road, not bothering to stop at the two-year-old house that was next on the road. What Mrs. Boynton had said was true; a lot of houses around here, especially older ones, had an additional structure, sometimes two, on the property. As we drove by the new house next to hers, I noticed that they had also built some kind of little hut that could be used for storage or painting or just daydreaming. I tried to remember if any of the houses we had seen yesterday had had such structures. Before we left today, I would have to drive by them again and see.

  We went down the road and stopped at all the houses. Half of them were empty; several hadn’t been built twelve years ago; three of them had barns or cottages behind them. No one I spoke to had ever heard of the Filmores. Everyone who had lived here when Darby disappeared remembered what had happened. Eddie got fidgety and I couldn’t blame him. If you look at the world through the eyes of a three- or four-year-old, you realize how strange certain events can seem. Mommy goes for a drive, stops at every house, asks a lot of questions, goes back to the car. What is Mommy looking for? She could knock on doors in our town if she wanted to.

  Where there were barns and cottages, I asked if I could see them. One was a faded old red barn. There was still hay inside and stalls for horses. The owner, an elderly woman named Mrs. Pinker, said they owned horses for a while after the war when her children were young. She meant World War II. Had the barn been used for anything else since? I asked. Just as an extra garage and to store garden equipment.

  I thought that if I were lost and found a place like this, I might go inside to get out of the cold and wind, although it wasn’t much milder inside than out.

  “Where are the horses?” Eddie asked, having heard Mrs. Pinker mention them.

  “They’re gone,” I said.

  “Where did they go?”

  “I think the lady gave them away. Nobody was riding them anymore.”

  “Poor horses,” Eddie said.

  We had lunch at the same place Betty and I had gone to yesterday. The waitress remembered me and took an interest in Eddie. While they were chatting, I checked my notes. One house had had a caretaker’s cottage that was rented out to a young couple. They weren’t home and the owner wouldn’t unlock the door. I asked who had lived there before the current residents, and she said from time to time they rented it to a single person or a couple, but she couldn’t give me dates or years. It was obviously off the books, and no records were kept. Once, she said, they had rented to a couple with a small child and they wouldn’t do that again. She didn’t explain and I didn’t ask.

  One other house had had a barn, not a big old one that had housed animals but more of a shed that a daughter had used as a writer’s studio. Going through the notes I had taken, I had a rush of admiration for the police who did this work on a regular basis. They, of course, had more power than I. They could get inside a locked cottage if they had to, but it was a tedious job and often yielded as little as my work had.

  After lunch I drove back to the Pasternaks’ house. This time I was pretty sure there was someone home. Smoke was coming out of the chimney. We walked up to the front door and I rang the bell.

  “Who is it?” a woman’s voice called from inside.

  “My name is Christine Bennett!” I called back.

  “What do you want?”

  “I’d like to talk to you!”

  “What are yo
u selling?”

  “I’m not selling anything!” I was getting tired of shouting.

  “That’s what everyone says.”

  I waited, but nothing happened. “Mrs. Pasternak?” I called.

  The door was pulled open. The woman standing there, giving us a hostile look, had graying hair pulled back in a bun. She was wearing a loose brown jumper with a brown turtleneck sweater and heavy shoes. Her eyes were dark and piercing. I felt Eddie’s hand tighten on my own. I didn’t blame him.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Mrs. Pasternak, I’m looking for information about the young man who died in the woods twelve years ago. Darby Maxwell. Do you remember that?”

  “Should I?”

  “Most of the people around here recall what happened. He was lost in the woods. A lot of the men were part of the search.”

  “He was retarded.”

  “That’s right. If you have a minute, I’d like to talk to you about it.”

  She stood there looking at us, and I wondered whether she was going to make us stand in the cold or close the door in our faces. Finally she said, “Come inside.”

  We went in and stood in the foyer. It was warm inside, which was all I cared about. Eddie stayed very close to me and said nothing.

  “I can’t tell you anything,” she said, preempting my questions.

  “I wondered if you ever heard any gossip about that young man, if he might have stayed with someone in the area.”

  “I don’t gossip.”

  I could believe it. “Well, perhaps—”

  “I remember the incident. I don’t know any more about it than what I read in the papers.”

  This was not going to be a productive interview and I didn’t think being warm and friendly would alter her demeanor. I got to the point. “Have you ever known anyone named Filmore?”

  “Filmore?”

  “Yes. A man named Lawrence and his wife, Laura.”

  “Lawrence Filmore.” For the first time, she seemed to have an interest in my question. “It rings a bell,” she said, an almost-smile working around her hard mouth. “But not because I ever knew anyone with that name. I grew up in Buffalo and there’s a Fillmore Avenue there, a big street. It’s named after the president, you know. He was a Buffalo man.”