Death in Lovers' Lane

by Carolyn G. Hart

  “But how can you be so sure Candy shot him?”

  “Okay, okay, let me show you.” He came up beside me, pointed toward the evergreens that screened the bench and the pool from the terrace. “You can’t see the house, not even now, in November. In the summer, it’s thick, really thick. So this place is really private. He—”

  I realized that Michael always called his father “he” or “the bastard,” never by name.

  “—came down here every night to smoke a cigar. He was shot by somebody standing right in front of him with his gun from his study. I was in the basement. Jennifer was in her room. There was nobody else around. They found Candy’s fingerprints on the gun. Her dress had pine needles in it. And she comes up with this nutty story that she’s talking on the phone with some woman who’d just called to ask her to put some stuff out on the front porch for some charity drive and Candy doesn’t remember the woman’s name or the charity. I mean, Candy’s so damn dumb you can’t believe it. She told this story and that’s all she ever said, over and over and over again.”

  “Angela Chavez testified that she did make that call, that she was on the telephone with your stepmother at the precise time the shots were heard by your next-door neighbor.”

  Michael’s smile was pitying. “Sure, she testified to it. And I know the cops couldn’t find any connection between her and Candy, but, lady, believe me, it’s there.”

  “If it isn’t there, if Angela told the truth, it means someone else shot your father.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Like me? Or Jennifer?” Slowly, he shook his head. “You know something, if I’d killed the bastard, I’d have said so—because I would have been proud of it. But I didn’t. It was like I was frozen. I couldn’t do anything about him. I couldn’t.” His voice ached with pain. “Don’t you think I would have saved my mom if I could have?”

  He looked so young, so forlorn, so bereft.

  “All right, Michael. Not you. Not Jennifer. But is there anyone else who might have hated your father, someone he worked with, someone he’d quarreled with?”

  “No.” Michael’s voice was thin and high. “That’s almost the worst part. Everybody thought he was such a great guy. A great guy. And he was a hell of a businessman. Made money like it was cotton candy and he owned the machine. Oh no, everybody at the club thought he was wonderful. Great sportsman. Had a six handicap in golf. And when Mom died—she had cancer—everybody was so goddamn sorry for him. Because nobody knew what he was like. Just us. And nobody would’ve believed us—because he was such a great guy. No, it was all here at home. So now when I meet people, I wonder, ‘What are you really like? How do you act at home?’ I don’t know what’s real. I don’t think I’ll ever know.”

  “So there’s no one you know about who would have had a reason to shoot your father?”

  “No. Besides, it was his gun. From his study. How did the helpful stranger get his gun?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Nope. It starts here. It ends here. Candy did the good deed and your Angel saved her ass.”

  “I’d like to talk to Candy, Michael. Could you tell me how to get in touch with her?” I’d had no luck finding Candace Murdoch in the directory.

  “Sure. She lives in Vegas. She took her part of the loot and got the hell out. Last I heard, she was having a great time.”

  “So you don’t think she could have been in Derry Hills last Wednesday night?”

  “I’d think that’s about as likely as my visiting the old bastard’s grave. But come on in, I’ll get you her number.”

  We followed the winding path around the shrubs and through the trees to the house. Michael held open the back door for me.

  In the study, he found an address book, copied a number, handed it to me.

  He pointed to the open desk drawer. “The famous murder weapon was taken from that drawer.” His tone was flippant.

  “And your sister’s address…”

  He shook his head. “My last letter came back, ‘Addressee Unknown.’” Now his voice was empty.

  No matter where Jennifer Murdoch had been last week, I didn’t think she’d been contacted by Maggie Winslow.

  Michael Murdoch was apparently the only member of that unhappy family who had been in Derry Hills when Maggie died.

  “Michael, could you tell me where you were last Wednesday night, say between six and seven?”

  He didn’t even bother to ask why. “Sure. I work at the Battered Women’s Shelter on Wednesday nights. I was serving dinner.”

  I would check it out, but this alibi was too simple, too open to be anything other than true.

  I took the front entrance to the J-School. Instead of going directly up the stairs to the newsroom and my office, I walked down the hall to the main office.

  Angel was working at the copy machine, sorting a multi-page document as sheets slid onto different levels.

  I came up behind her. “Hi, Angel.”

  She stiffened. It broke her rhythm. She scrambled to catch up as the sheets continued to click into place. Her elbow caught a stack of sorted documents and they toppled to the floor, fluttering in every direction.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” I bent down and began to gather up the sheets. “Here, I’ll help you get these in order—”

  She clicked off the machine, bent down, and hurriedly scooped up papers. “No, no, that’s all right.” Her hands trembled. She kept her eyes on the spilled sheets.

  I knelt beside her. “Oh, this won’t take long. We can visit while we work.”

  “No, please—”

  I didn’t give her time. “I could really use some help. You told me the other day that you grew up here in Derry Hills and I’m thinking about buying a house and I wanted to ask you about neighborhoods.”

  Her face swung toward me. Her relief was so complete, so palpable that I almost felt ashamed. Until I thought of Maggie.

  Michael Murdoch was quite correct. You can never be sure of the face you see. But Angel didn’t have Michael’s painfully achieved wisdom.

  By the time we had the sheets sorted, Angel was relaxed and cheerful and I heard all about the Linwood neighborhood where she’d grown up and Brookhaven, the lovely street where her Aunt Delores lived, and how she missed living in a real house, but her apartment was awfully nice.

  It was easier than shagging balls at a driving range and sometimes, yes, when necessary, I can dissemble with the skill of an actress, the guile of a politician, and the coldness of a reptile.

  I dressed appropriately, of course: a navy silk suit, a red-and-navy lattice print silk blouse. I wore a small diamond-burst pin on my lapel. And dark hose to hide the angry purple bruise on my ankle.

  I was smiling as the door opened. I held a notepad prominently in my hand. I introduced myself as a reporter for a new publication that would be launched in the spring and I was gathering material about this wonderful old section of Derry Hills, and if Mrs. Simpson could spare a few minutes…

  Mrs. Simpson wore a red tam over a fringe of gauze-thin orange hair. She’d learned eye makeup from Theda Bara. Three streaks of green bracketed each eye. Twin spots of rouge rode high on her plump cheeks and matched the bright crimson of her checked gingham apron. She dried her hands on a dishtowel and said shyly, “I’m in the middle of baking, but if you don’t mind talking in the kitchen…”

  I didn’t mind.

  She brought her mixing bowl to the table.

  As she stirred the batter, she said, “Is your magazine the same one the young lady worked for?”

  “Maggie?” I felt as if I’d pulled the lever and quarters were gushing out, bright, shiny, and jingling.

  “Yes, that was her name. She was interested in the neighborhood, too.” Her face puckered in distress. “That was so awful, what happened to her.”

  “Yes, yes, it was.”

  “Tell me, is it true that she was involved with that woman’s husband?” Mrs. Simpson paused, her wooden spoon suspended
above the bowl, her eyes avid.

  “There’s some question about that. Apparently, he often had affairs, but he claims not in this instance.”

  The spoon moved again, rhythmically, thumping against the sides of the bowl. “Well, of course he would say that.”

  Of course he would.

  I put my notepad on the table. “I hadn’t realized Maggie had already talked to you. But this is such a lovely old neighborhood. I hate to ask you to go over it all again…”

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” she said happily. “It’s fun for me to remember.”

  I recorded pages of information about Simpsons, of course, while drinking several cups of strong black tea. She popped up once to lift out a steaming pan of gingerbread. I ate two pieces. We worked our way through the histories of her next-door neighbors, the Willoughbys to the east and the Ja

  cobsons to the west, as she dropped dough on shiny aluminum.

  “And, let me see, that lovely house across the street…”

  “Oh, yes, the young lady was very interested in the Chavez family. That’s the kind of family she wanted to write about. The people who’ve lived there since, the Mabrys and then the Cokers, everybody worked, and it wasn’t the kind of family she wanted to know about.” Mrs. Simpson set a timer as she slid two cookie sheets into the oven. She returned to the table, her eyes sparkling. “…such nice people, Louisa and Carlos. Carlos taught Spanish in the high school. He and Louisa had Paul and Angela, and theirs was a real old-fashioned kind of family.” Mrs. Simpson stirred her tea. “They went to church every Sunday and Louisa was a homeroom mother and helped take the kids on field trips, and Carlos was a Scout leader. And he worked so hard, had a second job at Carstairs Grocery.” She looked at me earnestly. “You know how hard it is to get along on a teacher’s salary, but he wanted Louisa to be home with the kids and I think that’s wonderful. But everything turned upside down when Carlos died. Here one day, gone the next. They sent a senior from the school to get Louisa. They took him to the hospital in an ambulance and we were all so worried. I went over to stay with Paul and Angela. But when I called the hospital, it sounded okay. It was his appendix. They did the operation, but the next day he got peritonitis and he died three days later. Well,” Mrs. Simpson heaved a sigh, “the good years were over. Paul got a job after school. Angela was still too little. Louisa went to work in the school cafeteria. She had to sell the

  house and they moved to a tiny little apartment. Then, when Angela was in high school, Louisa got cancer. After Louisa died, Angela moved in with her aunt and her cousin, Loretta. I know how much they meant to her. Angela just adored Loretta. And that was the saddest thing.”

  “What happened to Loretta?” I’d stopped taking notes. I supposed I was following behind Maggie, but if she’d found something here, she was cleverer than

  I. What possible difference could it make about Angela’s cousin Loretta?

  “Cancer, again,” Mrs. Simpson said mournfully, her eyes dark with the fear that all women know. She tossed her head. “But I think she would have lived if she’d had good care. It’s just dreadful what can happen to you now.”

  I was puzzled. “What, Mrs. Simpson?”

  Her voice rose indignantly. “Loretta’d worked there for ten years. But nobody cares about that anymore. When she got sick and they found out it was cancer, they fired her, so she lost her health insurance.” Mrs. Simpson reached up, her hand clutched the bib of her apron. She looked at me with anxious eyes. “Do you think that’s going to happen to Medicare? Do you think they’re going to take it away? People like me, we don’t have any money. If we don’t have insurance…” Her voice trailed away.

  “No, Mrs. Simpson, I don’t think they’ll take away Medicare.” Although I would hate to stake my life on it.

  Her old, frail hand squeezed the gingham. “Poor Loretta. Her doctor wouldn’t keep her, so she had to go to the public hospital. But you wait and wait and wait there and the doctors aren’t so good. Or maybe they’re just so busy…so many sick.”

  Abruptly she pushed back her chair. “Let me show you…” She darted down the hall, but returned in just a moment. “Here, this is a neighborhood picnic when our kids were little.” She pointed out faces to me in the moment captured on a brilliant summer afternoon when life and health must have seemed forever secure. I recognized Angela in the smiling face of a little girl roasting marshmallows on a stick. “And that’s Paul. And that’s my son, Robbie”—an arthritic finger gently smoothed the snapshot—“and my daughter, Beth. And there’s Louisa and Carlos. See, he was pushing her in the swing. And there, next to the tree, that’s Loretta.”

  Loretta was laughing as she looked up at a stocky teenage boy. Sun slanted through tree limbs, catching her in a nimbus of light.

  “Where did Loretta work, Mrs. Simpson?”

  Slowly, the happiness seeped out of her face.

  “Do you remember?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve never forgotten. She worked for the big cement company. She was in the office of the president. She worked for Mr. Murdoch.”

  Oh, yes. For the bastard.

  Good going, Maggie.

  In the cross directory, I found a listing for a Delores Hernandez at 2103 Brookhaven, so, Loretta Hernandez. Once again in The Clarion morgue, I pulled up an obituary for Loretta Hernandez on June 11, 1982:

  LORETTA HERNANDEZ

  Funeral for Loretta Hernandez, 31, of Derry Hills, will be at 10 A.M. Saturday in St. John’s

  Catholic Church, with the Reverend Albert Kroft officiating. Miss Hernandez died Thursday in a local hospital following a lengthy illness.

  Rosary will be at 7 P.M. today in the Sandstrom Funeral Home Chapel. Burial will be at Resurrection Cemetery in Derry Hills.

  Miss Hernandez was born January 3, 1951, in Derry Hills. She graduated from Derry Hills High School in 1969. She attended the Bittle Business College and was employed as a secretary with Murdoch Construction from 1971 to 1981. She was a member of St. John’s Catholic Church, where she sang in the choir and had served as treasurer of the Altar Society. She had been a member of the Derry Hills Community Chorus.

  She is survived by her mother, Delores Hernandez, of the home. Memorial gifts may be made to Hospice of Derry Hills, 129 Swallowtail Road.

  Loretta Hernandez died in June of 1982. Curt Murdoch was shot on July 21, 1982. And Angel had adored her cousin.

  Temple Harris was in the coffee shop in the basement of the courthouse. Temple was one of Derry Hills’s most successful trial lawyers. He had been an assistant prosecutor when the Murdoch murder case was tried. He was also active in the Nature Conservancy, and that was where I’d become acquainted with him.

  “Hello, Temple, do you have a minute?” He rose with a smile. He was tall and courtly,

  with silver-streaked black hair and a flowing silver mustache. “I always have time for lovely ladies.” He pulled out a chair for me.

  I’d barely begun when he grabbed the conversation and galloped. “Of course I remember, Henrie O. God, we were hacked. Talk about a surprise witness! But the judge overruled our objections about lack of notice because the defense was clearly astonished and announced it also lacked prior notice and hadn’t known of Chavez’s involvement in the case until the morning that she testified. That was a real Perry Mason appearance. I still can’t believe it.” He frowned, his eyes glinting. “I know it was a conspiracy.”

  “Did you investigate that possibility?”

  “You bet we did.” He cradled his coffee cup in big gnarled hands. “We asked the police to investigate Chavez to see if she could be charged with either false testimony or conspiracy.” He blew out a spurt of outrage and his mustache quivered. “They went after her like hound dogs after a rabbit, but they couldn’t find a single solitary point of connection between Chavez and the Murdoch woman.”

  I wasn’t surprised. And who could fault them? I doubt that the prosecutor’s office examined Angel’s family tree. And why should any investigator have tr
oubled to discover the job history of Angela’s dead cousin?

  “Yeah.” Temple’s voice was thoughtful. “I was the one who kept after them. The night of Murdoch’s murder, Chavez was baby-sitting across the hall in her apartment house.” He squinted at the ceiling. “I even remember the parents’ name. Dorman. They wouldn’t budge on their story. They got home ten minutes before Curt Murdoch was shot

  and they saw Chavez walk into her apartment. And she couldn’t have gotten across town unless she flew. She sure as hell didn’t jog. She’d just had some foot surgery and was still all bandaged up. Oh yeah, it was a solid story—and I know damn well she was lying in her teeth. But I don’t know why. Oh, I don’t think she shot Murdoch. No, that was little Miss Candy. Chavez was in her apartment, but I’ll never believe she was on the phone with Candace Murdoch when that gun went off. Hell, they could give me an affidavit from the Pope, and I still wouldn’t believe it. Chavez is lying. But nobody will ever prove it, Henrie O.”

  I had to agree with that.

  I got back to the J-School about four. There was only one file left now. I settled into rereading my notes about Howard Rosen and Gail Voss. But I kept my eye on the time. At five to five, I hurried downstairs. I was waiting for Angela when she came down the side steps.

  “Angel.”

  She looked up with her usual equable smile. “Hi, Henrie O. Have you made any progress in your house hunt?”

  “Yes.” I reached out, patted her arm. “I’m sorry about your cousin Loretta.”

  Her face congealed in shock. Then, like shutters closing, her expression smoothed into a stolid blankness. She ducked her head, began to walk swiftly toward the parking lot.

  I kept pace. “I know what happened.” I spoke gently. “Your cousin died because of Curt Murdoch. At least, that’s what you believe.”

  For an instant her walk checked, then she picked up speed again.

  I can move fast, too. “Angel, you went off to L.A. to visit a friend. You left the morning after Murdoch was killed. But I’m sure your aunt kept you informed. There were no tears in Mudville over his death, not from anyone in your family. I imagine your aunt told you when Candace was arrested and maybe even sent you clippings about the murder investigation, so you knew Candace had put out a plea for the woman who called that night to come forward. Then you came back to town—”