The Silver Anniversary Murder

by Lee Harris

  “Exactly.”

  “So where does that leave me?” I pointedly asked the most important question.

  “I suggest you try to find someone who was at the Brinkers’ wedding and see what they know of trouble in the Brinkers’ lives at that time and why they fled Portland for San Diego a couple of years later. And I’m going to say something about which I’m not entirely certain, but almost: I don’t think Ariana had a twin or even a sister who was not a twin. I think your Auntie June or Aunt Junie is confused and may never come up with the facts you need. But don’t give up trying. There have to be other sources.”

  “I should hear about that soon,” I said. I sensed we were done. My papers were lying in the center of the table and Joseph had put her pencil down. I pulled my notes toward me and clipped them in my notebook. “Is that it?” I asked.

  “One more thing. Think very hard about why Mr. Brinker’s car papers were in his wallet and Mrs. Brinker’s weren’t. There may be something there.”

  I wrote it down, fearful of forgetting. “We’ll put our heads together,” I said, meaning Jack.

  “And now that we’ve talked about your problem, I’d like to tell you about ours.”

  “A problem?” A chill passed through me. “You’re well, aren’t you?”

  “I’m absolutely fine and expect to remain so. But the convent is in deep trouble, Chris. I’ve mentioned this before. It’s like a cloud that you hope will pass you by, but I don’t see how we can ignore its presence any longer. Our novices are almost down to zero. Our average age is close to grandmotherly. I’m young and I’m in my fifties.”

  I nodded. Each time I had visited I had noted the age of the nuns and the lack of new blood. Each time I returned home, I prayed that the situation would turn around. Joseph had alluded to this problem before, but I sensed that she had now moved from worrying about it to considering solutions. I did not want to hear her proposals.

  “I know how painful this is for you,” Joseph said, “but we have to consider what will become of St. Stephen’s, and I would rather design the solutions than be forced to accept someone else’s.”

  “And what are you proposing?” I asked in a fragile voice.

  “We can leave St. Stephen’s and join another Franciscan community as a group. We can join other convents individually. We can invite another group of Franciscans to join us.”

  I let the tears roll down my cheeks. I hated the first two proposals so much I could not bring myself to comment on them. I disliked the last one, but recognized that it was the best. “The college,” I said.

  “The college is perhaps the bright spot in this mess. Do you know that girls are now looking for all-female places in which to study? Styles change, for which we must sometimes be thankful. What was it Tennyson said? ‘Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.’ We are working on beefing up some of our departments to draw more bright young women as students. The day may come when I’ll call on you to teach a course.”

  I smiled through my tears. “Of course I would, Joseph. With great pleasure.”

  “But we need more nuns to keep the convent going. I am in negotiations, if you want to call it that, with several convents in the eastern half of the United States. I don’t know if anything will work out. But you’ll be the first to know if there’s happy news.”

  “I’m glad there are possibilities. I can’t imagine this place becoming a condominium.”

  “We will try to avoid that. Although I must tell you, we have had feelers from a Protestant church in the area, wondering if we are thinking of selling.”

  I swallowed and said nothing.

  “Why don’t we go downstairs and play some baseball?”

  18

  I was very quiet on the drive home. While Joseph had sounded optimistic about the outcome of St. Stephen’s problems, I thought only of the possibilities that the nuns might be scattered about the country or might be forced to join another convent, one in better financial shape but somewhere far from here. At various times I have visited convents in metropolitan areas, and the convents are generally situated in parts of the cities where trouble is a constant companion. That St. Stephen’s owned the most beautiful piece of land I had ever walked on was always of great comfort to me. I had felt safe there, never looked over my shoulder to see if I was being followed. We had been as close to a family as any group of unrelated women could be. But it was not all bliss. Some women were overbearing or distant or troubled and thus difficult to get along with. Still, we all tried.

  As Jack turned in to Pine Hill Road, I dismissed my thoughts and looked back to Eddie, who had been quietly busy with puzzles or toys during the drive.

  He looked at me and gave me his warm smile. “Can I have a cookie now?”

  “Let’s wait till we’re inside and I can pour you some milk. Did Sister Dolores make them for you?”

  “Uh-huh. I like her cookies but she kisses me too much.”

  Jack laughed. “Count yourself lucky, my boy. Those are the sweetest ladies you’ll ever meet.”

  There was a message on the machine. I hoped it would be from Nick Brinker, but it was from Jack’s mother. He called her back and spent a while talking before handing the phone to Eddie and then to me. Finally, Eddie and I dashed out for a swim.

  The call from Nick came about seven. He had just returned from an afternoon visit with his mother and he sounded low. “She had some kind of episode last night,” he said. “The doctor came but he didn’t think she needed hospitalization.”

  “I’m sorry to hear she’s unwell.”

  “I stayed with her a couple of hours today, but she’s really out of it, Chris. It took a while till she accepted that I was her son.”

  “That must be very painful.”

  “Yeah, it is. I liked it a lot better when she was bossing me around.”

  “I’m glad Ariana got to see her while she still had some memory left.”

  “You know, I gave it a try anyway. I waited till she was calm and we were talking about nice things. She didn’t even remember that Ariana came to visit.”

  “That’s OK, Nick. It was so nice of you to try.”

  “Anything we can do to help?”

  “I’d really like to know who went to your uncle and aunt’s wedding. I’d like to talk to someone who remembers them from that time. It was only twenty-five years ago.”

  “Hey, I’ll tell Jessie to give it a try.”

  Jack and I talked later about the problems at St. Stephen’s. He commiserated but had no helpful suggestions. He remarked that although such events had been occurring more frequently over the last century, he understood that when it happened to my convent, it was a personal catastrophe. I was glad he understood.

  The next day Ariana showed up.

  It started with a phone call from the motel. I drove over and picked her up. Jack was cooking dinner, so there would be lots to eat.

  “I hope you weren’t worried,” she said as we approached the house. “I didn’t answer my phone and I’ve moved.”

  “Just in the last few days?”

  “I have a friend who had a bigger apartment and she decided she couldn’t afford it. We traded.”

  I laughed, thinking that being young and single meant you could manage almost anything. “So you have a new phone number.”

  “Well, I will when I get back. Has anything happened?” She sounded as though she expected a quick no.

  “Some of your parents’ furniture was found abandoned.”

  “Really? Have you seen it?”

  I told her the story, including my discovery in the desk of the article about me. “So we have a good idea now why I was called.” I parked in the driveway and we got out of the car and went inside. After the hellos were over, I poured us some lemonade and we sat under our umbrella behind the house in the light breeze.

  “We couldn’t have done it here,” Ariana said looking around.

  “Done what?”

  “Dug up the backyar
d. It’s much more open.”

  “You’re right. We would have had to sneak in at night.”

  “I put it away,” she said, and I knew she meant the money. “And the reason I’m here is that I’ve decided to tell the police who I am and claim my parents’ bodies.”

  “I think that’s a good idea. We know the detective on the case, Joe Fox. He may be willing to drop over tonight or tomorrow and talk to you.”

  “That would be great. I hate the idea of sitting in some kind of interrogation room in a police station.”

  “Ariana, that’s not going to happen. You’re a survivor, not a suspect. I’ll ask Jack to give Joe a call. Once you’ve identified yourself, I’m sure he’ll let you see the furniture and its contents. It’s being stored in White Plains.”

  I then told her the rest of the developments, especially the call yesterday from Nick Brinker.

  “So Aunt Junie’s a lost cause,” she said. “Well, I told you in Madison that I don’t think we’ll ever find this killer or these killers.”

  “Don’t give up. Ariana, you mentioned at some point the wedding pictures of your parents.”

  “Yes. There were several, but not in an album, although some of them looked as though they might have been torn out of one.”

  “And some were cut.”

  “Yes. The way you might cut out a picture of your old boyfriend standing next to you.”

  “Someone was at that wedding who they didn’t want you to know about. Nick’s wife is going to see what she can find out. Something must have happened between a guest at the wedding and your parents. Do you still have those pictures?”

  “I never had them. Mom kept them in a drawer somewhere. If you didn’t find them in their furniture, they may be lost.”

  “Or taken by the killer. Only some of the furniture was recovered, but the desk was there.”

  “They probably destroyed what they didn’t want found.” I agreed. “Why don’t we go in and tell Jack you’d like to talk to Joe Fox? I’m sure he can take a little time off from his cooking to make a phone call.”

  “How did you manage to find a man who would cook for you?”

  “I was just lucky. Or maybe he tasted my food and decided he had no choice.”

  “Does he have a brother?”

  We both laughed and went inside.

  I knew Jack would be relieved that she was coming forward. It wasn’t his case and he had promised his silence, but his conscience was surely bothering him. He called Joe, who agreed to visit this evening for what Jack told him would be a meeting with an important person in the case. I dashed out at that point to pick up something sweet to serve with coffee, leaving Ariana behind to help or get in the way as she pleased.

  When Joe arrived at eight, he was as surprised as I had ever seen him. “The Mitchells’ daughter?” he said.

  “The Brinkers’ daughter,” Ariana responded, shaking his hand. “Ronald and Elaine Brinker’s daughter.”

  “You’ve been holding out on me, Mrs. Brooks.”

  “I have been holding out, Detective,” Ariana said. “I agreed to talk to Chris only after she promised that she would not tell the police about me. And she was true to her word. We have a lot to tell you.”

  And we did. At Ariana’s insistence, she and I had agreed beforehand not to mention the money. It was rightfully hers unless we learned it had come to the Brinkers illegally, which seemed less likely now than when we initially heard about it. I could tell that Joe had suspicions he didn’t voice about why the vehicle had been driven to Madison. He, of course, had heard about it when Jack did, so it was no surprise. The surprise was that we were there, too.

  She told a good tale. At times she looked my way for a detail, but for the most part, it was her story. She mentioned the missing wedding pictures, telling Joe my theory that someone at the Brinker wedding had had a falling out with them a few years after they were married.

  “But you still don’t know what that’s all about,” Joe said.

  “No, we don’t,” I said. “I have someone out there working on it, but I’m not hopeful. There don’t seem to be many identifiable people around who attended the wedding.”

  “But I’m sure it was a big wedding,” Ariana said. “Mom was wearing a long white dress and Daddy was in a tux. You don’t do that for a wedding in the minister’s study.”

  “Well, we’ll see what we can find out. I’ll have to ask you to drop by our office tomorrow so we can formalize what you’ve told me.”

  “I will. And whatever I have to do to get my parents’ bodies released . . .”

  “We will get that moving. I’m sure that’s important to you.”

  Later, after Joe had left, we sat quietly in the family room.

  Ariana appeared deflated. She had come to terms with her parents’ death, with the fact that they were murdered, very likely by someone who knew them, who was part of their inner circle a quarter of a century ago. Jack drove her back to the motel and I dug out our wedding album. I hadn’t turned the pages for a long time but I wanted to get some idea how the formal pictures were set up—who might have stood beside the bride or groom.

  I viewed the pictures slowly, relishing the images. I was a bit thinner there and looked younger, which startled me. But the changes in Jack were more pronounced. He still had a head of curly hair at that time and he seemed even more like a big kid than he did now. The hair has been trimmed and his face has taken on some of the cares that are part of his daily life. In short, we have aged.

  What I realized, not for the first time, as I flipped the pages, is how different my family situation is from most people’s. I was orphaned in my mid-teens so there were no parents in the wedding pictures. I am an only child, so there were no siblings. I lived half my life in a convent, so the people nearest and dearest to me were nuns. Several pictures showed Jack and me with groups or tables of Franciscan nuns. Not your ordinary wedding pictures.

  Who might have been cut off from the Brinkers’ pictures? A best man, a maid of honor, a parent, a sibling? How could we possibly figure out which of those it was without speaking to someone who had attended the wedding?

  Jack returned as I was finishing my nostalgic journey. “That our wedding album?”

  I told him why I had gone through it.

  “Let me see.” He flipped to the beginning, chuckling as he turned the pages. “I look like a kid,” he said. “How could a mature woman like you marry a kid like that?”

  “You showed great promise.”

  “And?” He turned to me.

  “You’ve fulfilled it.”

  “Yeah.” He stopped at a portrait of the two of us. “You are one gorgeous woman, do you know that?”

  My eyes filled. “Thank you.”

  “Just speaking the truth, my love.” He closed the book. “Let’s go up. This has stirred all kinds of marital longings.”

  It had in me, too. I put my arms around him and we hugged. Then we went upstairs.

  19

  I drove Ariana to see Joe Fox at the sheriff ’s office the next morning. I waited in a hard chair while she went inside to give her statement. It took longer than I had anticipated and I regretted having said I would wait. At least the dentist’s office has magazines to read; here there was nothing. I got up several times just to use my muscles, and I went to the watercooler but the water wasn’t cool. Finally, after more than two hours, a wilted Ariana walked out, Joe Fox trailing her.

  “What’s wrong?” I said, getting up. “You don’t look so good.”

  “He thinks I killed them,” Ariana said.

  “I never said that, Miss Brinker. I said you know a lot more than you’re telling me.” He sounded as annoyed as I had ever heard him, and he didn’t speak to Ariana with the deference he had used with Sister Joseph.

  “We’ll get you a lawyer,” I said crisply. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Mrs. Brooks, I am doing my job.”

  “I know you are, Joe, but you’re doing
it wrong. And she should have a lawyer. Come on, Ariana.” I took her arm and led her out of the building.

  As we set foot in the parking lot, she began to cry. “I thought this was just going to be a statement. He harrassed me. He said I was lying. He kept asking me about the house in Madison—why I went there, who I met. He thinks I had an accomplice who drove my parents’ car there the day we flew.”

  “He’s lost his mind,” I said angrily. “He can’t put you anywhere near the murders. He’ll never find your prints in your parents’ car. Did you leave any in the apartment?”

  “When I came looking for them, I’m sure I touched things.”

  “But they lifted prints long before that. We’ll call Arnold Gold as soon as we get home. You’ve already spoken to him. He’ll be delighted to represent an innocent person. And you can trust him. Unless you have another lawyer in mind.”

  “I don’t. The only lawyer I know in New York is the estate lawyer.”

  “How dare he,” I said.

  “You’re really angry. That makes me feel good. You believe me.”

  “Of course I believe you. I went to Madison with you. I went to the estate lawyer in New York with you. I know why you went to Madison. Listen, if Joe had the slightest amount of evidence, he’d charge you. He has nothing.”

  “Maybe he thinks I know who did it and I’m protecting him.”

  “Well, if you do, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by telling Joe Fox.”

  “I don’t, Chris. And I don’t know why they were killed unless it was because of the money. And I feel terrible.”

  “He’ll probably come after me next for a statement,” I grumbled.

  “He said something about that. I think he was going to ask you, but we stormed out of there.”

  “Good. He can tell Jack I’m withholding state’s evidence.” I was in a fury. “Is he going to release the bodies to you?”

  “He said he would, but not just yet. He’ll have their death certificates issued. At least he’s convinced I’m their daughter.”

  “Then he got one thing right. Did you have your birth certificate with you?”