And relive this? No, thanks. I thought fast, What the hell was her name?
"What about Genevieve? The attendant? Is Genevieve there?"
"Genevieve Barkley?"
"Yes," I said, exhausted. It was a small facility; how many Genevieves could they have?
"Why didn't you say? I'll get her."
After another ten minutes, Genevieve came to the phone. Mr. Fraser was indeed gone. Genevieve had helped him pack up two suitcases and three boxes of his belongings.
"Just about everything he had," she said. "He left most of his books to our library here. He gave me his stereo and a very generous gift as well."
Fraser's forwarding address was on file in the office, which was, as the excruciating switchboard operator had told me, locked. His belongings were to be shipped the next morning and I could practically hear Genevieve crane her neck to read the address on the shipping label.
"It's definitely New York, but that's all I can see. The lights are off and the box isn't facing the door. I can call you with it in the morning, if you like. We start at six."
"That would be great, Genevieve. Thanks so much." I gave her my cell number. "I was just a little worried."
"Don't you worry none about Mr. Gerald. He looked very happy when he left here. If that lady takes as good care of him as she does of that car, he's got no problem."
CHAPTER 44
"I'm sorry for calling so early."
"We've been up for hours; Gerald's anxious to speak with you, too." Hillary was cool but passed Gerald the phone.
"Hey, kiddo. So you tracked me down. I told Hill we'd get busted, but she just couldn't keep her hands off me."
I apologized again. "I've been doing some thinking." "Always dangerous. Did you talk to Margery?" "No. Yesterday flew. Did you reach William?" "Yup. He had no problem leaving a DNA sample. I picked up a testing kit from Sergeant Guzman; she showed me how to do it. Piece of cake." He lowered his voice a bit. "Are you going to see her? Want some company?" "You bet."
We agreed to meet at 9 A.M. in the Paradise parking lot.
"Looking good," I said, hopping out of the Jeep.
"Hillary thinks I need more exercise, so she dropped me off two blocks from here. She's resurrecting her workout room and hot tub, too. Somewhere her ex-husband must be laughing his fat ass off; sounds like she gave him a lot of grief for that stuff back in the eighties."
I offered him a hand getting in, but he didn't need it; under Hillary's care, he'd be snowboarding by this winter.
"When I called, Margery started to give me Richard's schedule, but I told her we were coming to see her."
"She all right with that?" he asked.
"I think she knows why we're coming. She just told me to come early so we could talk privately."
The Stapley home looked like a smaller version of the Historical Society's building. Lots of lawn exactly an inch and a half tall, with a putting green in the front and thick, unnecessary pillars designed to impress. I'd learned my lesson with Hillary and decided, on the way over, to take it slow and let Margery do most of the talking.
There was frailty, but also something resolute in Margery Stapley's diminutive frame as she answered the door. She led us to a parlor just off the center hall, with a fireplace and a conversational grouping of chairs. Over the fireplace hung a lovely painting of a garden. Gerald admired it and stepped a bit closer. "Is that a Childe Hassam?" he asked.
"Yes," Margery answered. "Father gave it to me for my twenty-first birthday. Richard had it reframed for me recently, but I'm not sure the new frame is an improvement. Please sit down. And help yourself. My house -keeper put this out for us." She motioned to a small cart with coffee and cookies.
"My wrists aren't what they used to be, and using the computer doesn't help."
She massaged her wrists as she began. "I used to be quite strong. I played tennis with my first husband, Henry. He was so much taller, we must have made an odd-looking couple on the court. But we were a good team. He had the power and I had the touch. He died, you know."
"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry."
"I was quite young. All my friends were busy with their own husbands, their families. Father wasn't much help either. We'd never been close," she explained. "I was unhappy for a long time, the kind of unhappiness that's so profound it's as if you'll never be happy again. Do you know what I mean?"
I nodded mechanically, but Gerald seemed to share a deeper understanding.
"One night I forced myself to go to one of the free concerts in the Peacock band shell. Just to get out of the house. It was a lovely night, this time of year. They were playing a program of standards from before the war."
She looked down, momentarily lost in the patterns of her rug, and then told us how one night she met a boy there.
"He was visiting Springfield for the summer. After the concert, we walked down to the pier, just talking. I felt as if the floodgates had opened. We talked all night and laughed like I hadn't for years. We stayed up to watch the sun rise. I saw him only once after that night. He came to the house I'd shared so briefly with Henry. I was so naive. Another woman would have known she was pregnant much sooner.
"I didn't know what to do," she went on bravely. "I'd heard rumors. About the Peacocks. I heard they could help girls who were . . . in need of help. I planned to go very late one night when I was sure I wouldn't be seen. When I arrived, a strange man was there on the terrace. I was terrified. I hid in the bushes, sobbing, waiting for him to leave, but he just stayed on the terrace, smoking one cigarette after another. It was agonizing. The longer I waited, the more confused I got, and the louder my sobs became. Finally the man heard and called to me. He asked if I wanted him to get Dorothy, but I was too frightened and upset to even reveal myself. When I wouldn't come out of the bushes, he softly said, 'Vaya con Dios' and tossed me a small medal."
"William Peacock?"
She nodded. "I didn't know it was William until much later, when I was asked to find him for the Historical Society. I told everyone I couldn't find him, but that was a lie."
She took a deep breath and continued. "I decided to have my baby, then give it up for adoption. I was so alone. Henry was gone, and Father was always working. I rarely saw him.
"I saw so few people in those days. It wasn't difficult to conceal my condition. And Dorothy Peacock was a godsend. She acted as midwife; she delivered my beautiful baby boy, Henry, Jr. I thought of him as Henry's, you see."
It would have been hard to keep him and impossible to give him up, but Margery never got to make that choice. Henry, Jr. died of fever before he was three weeks old.
"When I saw William at the party, it all came crashing back," she said.
The next voice we heard was Richard's. He was standing in the open doorway. "You people have no right to be here."
"It's all right, Richard. All these years of keeping it bottled up inside. I'm relieved to finally tell someone. I'm tired though. Will you tell them the rest?"
He sat on the sofa next to his wife, the strain evident on his face. "Margie's father thought she needed looking after; I'm just glad he gave me the job.
"When Henry, Jr., was taken, the Peacock sisters agreed to handle things. They treated the body with some herbal concoction and kept him in a makeshift chapel in the Peacocks' basement, where Margie could visit him. It was no one's intention, but he wound up staying there for forty-odd years."
"Wearing the medal that William had given Margery," I added. They both nodded.
"Any idea where that damn candy wrapper came from?" I was glad that Gerald asked, because even if it proved nothing, I was still dying to know.
"Renata couldn't do without her English chocolates," Margery said. "She imported them for years before they were available here."
"Once Dorothy died, I knew the insurance inspectors would go through the house with a fine-tooth comb," Richard said, so I moved the baby's body, just temporarily, to the white garden, until Margery could decide on a permanent
burial site.
"To be honest, Ms. Holliday, one of the reasons I gave you the job was because I didn't think you'd be quite so thorough. And so fast. I thought I'd bought myself some time."
My ego was bruised. So it wasn't my expertise and salesmanship that had gotten me the job.
At Margery's gentle prodding, Richard continued, "I'm afraid I'm the one who locked you in the greenhouse that night; I'd been searching for something. Margery remembered a journal that Dorothy kept of her . . . clients. I wanted to find it before anyone else did, in case there was anything in it that might embarrass Margery. When I saw you come back, I panicked. I just wanted to get away without you seeing me. I certainly didn't mean to harm you."
"Did you send me any e-mails?" I asked.
"No, dear," Margery said, raising her hand like a schoolgirl. "That was me; Richard is hopeless on the computer."
The former cop broke the silence. "None of this absolutely needs to come out," Gerald said kindly. "What you've done may not even be a crime. And it has nothing to do with the attack on Guido Chiaramonte."
"You mean the murder of Guido Chiaramonte."
We all turned toward the front door. Standing in the doorway was Mike O'Malley.
"Guido Chiaramonte died about an hour ago at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Hospital."
CHAPTER 45
Three hours later, Gerald and I were released, with stinging slaps on the wrists and strict instructions to stay away from Guido's nursery and the Stapleys, who were still in the police station being questioned. No one was sure what charges, if any, would be brought against them regarding the baby's body; it was completely uncharted territory in Springfield's history.
Hillary Gibson had been looking at paint chips when she got the call to pick her honey up from the slammer, and the way she glared at me told me I should keep my boca cerrada. I felt like the bad kid your parents didn't want you to hang out with.
Alone on the steps of the police station, I wished someone was coming to pick me up. To take me home, pour me a drink, rub my shoulders, and tell me everything was going to be all right.
The whole way home, the Bruce Springsteen lyrics kept going through my head, "One Step Up, Two Steps Back." We'd learned who the baby's mother was, and how it died, but that was only part of the puzzle. Now that Guido was dead, anything he might have known about Yoly Rivera's disappearance died with him. Was he responsible for Yoly's death; was that why he was killed? Or did he know someone else was?
That's what I was grappling with when I eased into my driveway and saw someone waiting for me. I rolled down the window. "What are you doing here?"
"That's a gracious welcome. Is that what they teach you in the suburban matron's handbook? You invited me, remember?"
"Today's Friday?"
"Last time I checked," Lucy said.
I helped her in with her bags. "How did you get here?"
"I availed myself of that quaint cab service you've got at the train station. Had to share with three Dashing Dans. Good way to meet men, I guess, if you like the harried, married type. I waited fifteen minutes, then called your cell. Helps to check messages every once in a while."
"Don't be mean to me, I've had a horrible day."
"Worse than it's been?" she asked suspiciously.
"Just as bad. Guido Chiaramonte?"
"Sure. The guy who looked like John Gotti." She stopped on the stairs. "What about him? He got . . . whacked?"
"For God's sake, it's not TV. The man's dead. And Hugo's about to be charged with murder. I'll give you chapter and verse when we get upstairs, but please tell me there's food in one of these bags. They weigh a ton."
"Better. Booze."
I opened a bottle of Grey Goose and brought her up to speed.
"So, you find a body and think that the mother is a missing girl from thirty years ago, but it turns out to be someone else. Now a local man is murdered and you think he had something to do with one or both of those other things," she recounted.
"Something like that."
"Nice friendly place you've got here. What ever happened to town meetings at the old fire house to resolve local disputes?"
"It is a nice town. It's like the garden, though: everything looks beautiful from a distance. It's only when you look closely that you see the snakes."
"That sounds like something on a needlepoint pillow, like 'Old Gardeners Never Die, They Just Spade Away.' "
"That reminds me. There's something I keep meaning to look up. Some quotes."
"If they're from the movies, I'm your girl. Otherwise, don't think I can help you."
I poured us each another martini, then went inside to get my copy of Bartlett's Quotations. "Why would Richard Stapley risk his reputation by burying a body in a soon-to-be public garden?" I asked when I returned.
"He told you. He's a wonderful husband," Lucy said. "He wanted to spare his beloved wife the agony of being exposed as a whore and unwed mother. Or worse."
"After all this time? Who'd care? She could have made up some story or said she was pregnant when her husband died. Who's still around to say otherwise?" I leafed through the Bartlett's.
"Look," Lucy said, "the happy townsfolk were skewering the Peacocks when they thought the baby belonged to one of them. And those girls are dead. They'd probably crucify a living person. Those poor women probably lived in fear for years, worrying someone would find out about the baby. I'd risk it. That sound?" Lucy said.
"What sound?"
"It's your cell. Feel free to delete the half-dozen snippy messages from me," she yelled.
I couldn't find my backpack and couldn't find the phone once I did. It had stopped ringing by the time I found it buried among the other squarish black things in my bag. The message light flashed eight. I skipped over the messages to missed calls. The last one was a Springfield number I didn't recognize. I called it.
Felix Ontivares kept it brief. Did I want to meet him and Celinda Rivera for breakfast the next morning?
CHAPTER 46
The next morning, Lucy and I drove downtown to the same hotel where I'd met William Peacock.
"Charming. Is this where the locals come for a nooner if they don't have a green house?" Lucy smirked. "You still haven't told me the whole story. I need details."
"Grow up."
I was relieved that my first meeting with Felix since the green house episode would be in a group and not one on one. They were waiting for us in the hotel's coffee shop. I'd forgotten how good-looking Felix was, and unconsciously pressed down my shoulders and sucked in my stomach, Pilates style. He stood up as we approached, nodding to Lucy and giving me a brotherly peck on the cheek.
"How in the world did you find her?" I asked.
"The power of television. In Mexico, everyone watches the soaps. I simply had a friend of mine say a few words after one of the episodes. We were inundated with phone calls."
That was because Celinda had kept her daughter's memory alive, plastering hand-lettered signs—żUsted conoce esta muchacha?—everywhere she went and pestering officials on both sides of the border for so long they ceased to hear her. A neighbor brought her the news that now someone else was looking for Yoly.
Celinda Rivera spoke almost no English, so there was a lot of smiling and gesticulating with little actual dialogue. She was not quite five feet tall; pleasantly round; with gray-streaked hair coiled into a bun at the base of her neck. Despite the mild weather, she wore four or five layers of brightly colored clothing. And if the clothing was cheery, it was in sharp contrast to her face, which was dark caramel, deeply lined, and ineffably sad. She reminded me of the Argentinean women going to the Plaza de Mayo to show they hadn't stopped looking for their lost relatives.
"You'll be happy to know that Mrs. Rivera says there is no connection between her family and the family of Hugo Jurado. The families lived many miles apart in Mexico, in different states. And Yoly has been missing since long before Hugo arrived in Springfield," Felix said, "so they couldn't have
met here."
I tried to sound happy. "That's wonderful. There is some bad news though. I don't know if you've heard; Guido Chiaramonte is dead."
They didn't know. Felix had repeatedly tried to reach me and Jon Chappell yesterday but was only able to leave messages.
"I haven't seen a paper today."
"It's bad for Hugo, but it was just a theory of mine that Guido knew about Yoly's disappearance, a possible motive for his murder." It was the first time I'd spoken the word out loud, and instantly regretted using it in Celinda's presence.
Felix explained the situation to her, but the familiar word spoke volumes.
"Jon and Felix have brought this case back into the public eye. Sometimes that's all that's needed."
As I fumbled for other, more comforting words, Lucy bent over to whisper to me. "I appreciate the thought, but, uh, Felix owns that network. That was how he got Yoly mentioned on the air. Have you really been out of the business that long? They live for this stuff," Lucy continued. One of her many ex-boyfriends had slid seamlessly into my old TV job, and was churning out true-life tragedy on a weekly basis. Lucy thought she could interest him in Yoly's story.
"And these guys work fast. They have a basic template and just plug in this week's gory details," she said thoughtlessly. She started to apologize, but Felix cut her off.
"It's not necessary. Mrs. Rivera couldn't understand you. She knows only that you want to help."
Half the story would be Felix's successful search for the mother, and the other half, our search for the daughter. It'd make a good feature. I didn't want to get Celinda's hopes up, but it was worth a try.
While Lucy made some calls, Celinda brought out a stack of blue airmail envelopes, tied with a brown and gold nylon shoelace. She took out Yoly's last letter and handed it to me.
She watched me struggle with the Spanish, and started to speak. Recite, really. As many times as she'd read that last letter, she knew it by heart, like a prayer.
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