by Rick Blechta
The St. James family had never spoken to the press about what had happened before or after the murder, so what Goode related came from reporters’ interviews with people close to the family, as well as the cops.
Olivia’s father, Bernard St. James II, had married late in life, although he had never lacked for female company. It was felt at the time that he had married only to assure the continuation of the family name. The bride had been all of thirty, twenty years her husband’s junior. She came from one of Boston’s upper crust families.
His wife Lydia had first borne him a son, Bernard St. James III, when he was fifty-two, and Olivia had arrived three years later.
Early childhood for both had been normal enough when you took into account that the family had a palatial home in Manhattan, an estate up the Hudson River in Putnam County, as well as a winter home in Florida near Sarasota – and all the servants to go with them. Their father preferred his children be taught by a succession of tutors or in private schools, since they were children of wealth and privilege.
Young Bernard was tapped from the beginning to take over operation of the family business when the time came, and Olivia was left to develop in whatever way she would. From an early age, she was found to be very artistic.
On the surface, the whole thing sounded dreadfully Edwardian to me: the son counted for everything; the daughter didn’t really matter.
In a later interview, though, Olivia’s former nanny painted a different picture. “Young Master St. James was a nice enough child, studious, bright, a capable sort, I suppose. But my little Olivia was like a ray of sunshine. Her parents both doted on her, especially her father. She could do nothing wrong and brought joy and light into their lives.”
Then, when Olivia was fourteen, her mother had been struck by a car and killed in front of the St. James’ mansion. Waiting on the front steps for her mother to cross the street, Olivia had unfortunately witnessed the whole thing. Always a sensitive child, the hit-and-run tragedy had a profound effect on her. As a result, she was reported to have become moody, furtive, and as one unnamed source put it, “distinctly odd”.
By the time Goode had gotten that far with the story, we were someplace in Markham, and Shannon’s driving skill had lost all pursuers but one.“Probably the cops,” she sighed,“but I can beat them, too. The whole thing’s stupid, since Palmer’s going to guess where I’m taking you, but I hate being played like some rank amateur. He should know better. Continue, Jackie.”
Goode flipped a page in her notebook.“Let’s see...I think we can skip most of the intervening years for the moment, except to say that to everyone’s shock, the elder St. James remarried soon after his wife’s death. The second wife, a junior lawyer who did a lot of work for the St. James company, was even younger than the first wife had been. The tabloids had a field day with that, spreading the rumour that St.James had been having an affair with her before his wife Lydia’s death. Bernard St. James II and his new wife were not amused and sued the tabloids, successfully, I guess, because the stories stopped abruptly.”
“They also could have been paid off,” Shannon observed.
“What happened to Olivia?” I asked Goode.
“That’s something I can’t answer at this point. I’ve only been able to find hints and gossip.”
“What kind of gossip?”
“A reporter at the time of her brother’s murder got some of her acquaintances to blab. I don’t know if what they said was true. The family only commented once to deny the story.”
I got the feeling that Goode was holding back .“You just better come out and say it.”
“After her mother’s death, Olivia began running with a fast crowd. Originally it was other students from the girls’ school she was attending. Anyway, she got into drugs, bad drugs.”
“Like what?”
“The quotes that I saw were along the lines of ‘We all smoked a little weed and popped some ecstasy, but when Olivia got mixed up with cocaine and heroin, we drew the line.’ The family’s denial was along the lines of ‘We know nothing of any drug use by our child.’ My guess is that they had to know.”
I felt pretty certain that Olivia had not been taking drugs when she was with me, but there was something in that dreamy, almost disassociated way she had of speaking, as if she were partially smashed, that reminded me of other former heroin users I’d run into. Heroin? Christ! That was a bad place to be. My past problems with booze paled in comparison.
“Did she get along with the stepmother?” Shannon asked.
“Same answer. We’re going to have to dig if we want to find that out.”
“Fast forward to the murder, then.”
Another few page flips from the back seat. “Okay, so Bernard St. James III has been groomed to take over the family fortune. He’s about to turn twenty-four, and Olivia is twenty-one. This is six years ago. The family is at the Florida home for the Christmas holidays.
“By this time, Olivia is behaving very erratically, sometimes inappropriately childlike, withdrawn, moody, by all accounts. It could all be drug-related, but the family denied it. Her mother was snuffed right in front of her, and that had to have left pretty deep scars. Her father is also very ill. Cancer. He was a heavy smoker. She adores her father and brother, has no friends at that point, keeps to herself.
“Christmas Eve. Bernard III announces to the family gathering – including a few aunts and uncles, etc. – that he’s going to marry a girl he’s been secretly dating in New York. Olivia, highly distraught, causes a major scene. From what I’ve been able to gather, she felt that he, too, was leaving her. She runs out of the house. Brother follows, saying he wants to talk to her alone, make her understand.
“Neither comes back. After several hours, a search is mounted. Brother Bernard is discovered in a grove of trees down near the river abutting the property, his head bashed in. Olivia is eventually found back in her room in some sort of stupor. The murder weapon, a large blood-stained rock, is found near the body, but there are no identifiable fingerprints or DNA.
“The only thing Olivia can say is that she remembers being with her brother, and they were arguing. Next thing she knows, she’s in the hospital. She doesn’t even remember going back to her room.
“The cops work on the case for weeks. The only thing they come up with is that a group of kids had been seen partying several times on the property in the vicinity where the body was found. They couldn’t be found and didn’t come forward, so that was a dead end. No one was ever charged.
“Now here’s the kicker: several of the cops believe Olivia did the deed, but fairly quickly, the family has her declared mentally incompetent and institutionalized so the cops can’t get at her. Even if they did, would any sort of charge stand up in court when she’s already been declared non compos mentis? All of this is done out of the media’s eye.”
“And the father?” Shannon asked.
“Packed it in less than six months after the tragedy. Olivia never saw him again.”
“Anything else?”
“In one Bernard II obit, the grieving stepmother vows to manage the family fortune until Olivia is ‘once again well and whole’. Professional opinion is that this will never happen.” Goode closed her notebook. “Then one night she walks into the Green Salamander in downtown Toronto. I wonder what the hell happened in between.”
“You’ve done some great work, Jackie,” Shannon said.
The last tail was long gone when we pulled into the industrial mall where Shannon had her office, but she drove around to the back side of the long building.
“No sense advertising we’re here. We’ll park at the far end then enter the building through one of the offices. There’s a corridor down the middle. We can get into my office without being seen.”
“What then?” I asked.
Shannon looked grim as she got out of the car.“We talk. Oh boy, do we talk!”
I saw from the clock that it was nearly noon when I finally sat down a
t her desk.
The boss handed Goode her laptop and marching orders. “Dig up anything else there is on the murder of Olivia’s brother, what institution she was sent to, I want everything you can find on the mother, father, stepmother, any people who were on the scene when the murder happened. Get me names, dates, times, places. Anything you think might be pertinent, I want it. I especially want names of people we can actually talk to. After that, we’ll hit the phones and see what they can tell us.”
Goode saluted. “Yes, boss!”
Shannon stopped in the doorway of her office. “And I told you not to call me boss!” she said with a sigh, shutting the door. “What are you thinking, Andy?”
I sighed. “A whole lot of things, but mostly that I’m not as surprised by this new information as I should be.”
“How so?”
“Olivia’s bedroom. I assume you looked at it when you used the facilities this morning.”
Shannon nodded. “Those staring eyes. She’s a troubled young lady.”
“Not as much as you’d think from what she painted,” I said stoutly – and perhaps too quickly.
“This case is not going to move any further unless you’re willing to lay all your cards on the table. We’re in deep water here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to know everything that passed between you and Olivia, especially any mention of Maggie.” She stared hard at me. “And I don’t think I’ve gotten that yet.”
I nodded slowly. “Where do you want me to start?”
Shannon pulled a yellow legal pad from her desk. “Let’s start with this – and please excuse my bluntness – did you sleep with Olivia?”
***
I sat in the living room listening to Olivia and my daughter Kate upstairs in her room, loudly becoming fast friends.
Kate had been begging to come back to stay overnight, since she missed her old bedroom and friends. Sandra had brought her in a few times for a visit, and I tried my best when I wasn’t out of town gigging, but I knew the change had been hard on her. I bought a new bed, a dresser and some other things so she could stay with me sometimes for a few days.
Olivia had been living in my house for a week by then, and I had to admit it was nice to have someone around to talk to. I hadn’t realized how lonely I’d been. Reading books only adds to solitude, and bars aren’t the best place for me to hang out for companionship.
On the other hand, Olivia was a bit of a problem to have around. First off, she really couldn’t manage many of the day-to-day things normal people handle with no trouble. She couldn’t cook past making toast or brewing coffee or tea. She left her dishes and belongings (what few she had) dropped anywhere in the house. The fridge door would be left open. We won’t even talk about the condition of the bathroom after she showered. Basically, I was living with a poorly housebroken fourteen-year-old. Only thing different from an actual teenager was that Olivia hardly slept.
So why didn’t I show her the door? She was making enough money now to get her own place, right?
First, she obviously couldn’t take care of herself. It was as if Olivia’s emotional development had stopped somewhere in her mid-teens, maybe earlier. How had she survived all this time? I couldn’t see Maggie playing nursemaid for her.
So I’d taken Olivia on and felt I was stuck with her, for good or ill.
Second reason for her staying was that she just flat-out fascinated me. Okay, maybe it went deeper, but I didn’t know that until later.
I delighted Olivia when I dubbed her The Song Sponge. She could hear something maybe twice and have it down, lyrics, melody and style. She also had perfect pitch. Once learned, a song was in the original key, no matter what Ronald would choose. On a few occasions, this led to some rather disastrous (and comical) collisions between vocalist and band. She could read music only rudimentarily and knew nothing about jazz history. Her knowledge started and stopped with the songs she’d learned.
Her phenomenal ear and memory also extended to our parts. It was as if Olivia had a tape recorder in her head. One time early on, she’d floored Ronald by singing note-for-note the beginning of a solo he’d played over a week earlier. It had been by way of a compliment to show how much she’d preferred it to to the one he’d taken that evening, but it was obvious he didn’t like what he considered her one-upmanship.
Dom had wryly observed, “You just ought to be glad she doesn’t want to play piano!” which caused an even bigger scowl on the pianist’s face. Ronald wouldn’t talk to any of us for the rest of the evening.
Funny thing was, Olivia couldn’t see that what she was capable of doing was freakish in the extreme. She just did it and never thought about it.
At an early rehearsal, Dom asked her where she’d learned how to sing.
“By singing for my daddy.”
“No, but I mean where? Who taught you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Ronald glared from the piano. “He means, where are you from?”
Olivia just looked at him blankly, then got up and left the room.
“She’s a first class nutcase,” Ronald grumbled.
“When someone sings the way she can,” Dom shot back, “our girlie can be from Mars for all I care.”
That got me thinking, though, so next evening after dinner, as we sat listening to some early recordings of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, I asked Olivia again to tell me a little about herself. It was all low key, all very friendly.
She looked at me blankly. “I’m a singer. I sing with your band.”
“I know, but what did you do before that?”
“I begged for money on the street. You know that.”
“You’ve always done nothing but beg?”
Blank expression.
“You say you learned to sing for your daddy. Where does he live?”
A tear coursed its way down one cheek, followed by several more.
“My daddy isn’t alive any more.”
“And your mother?”
Olivia sadly shook her head and wouldn’t look at me. That’s about as far as I ever got with her.
Clearly, she’d suffered some kind of trauma, and I began hoping that if I could give her some normality in her life, it might help.
Another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place recently, at the end of a long rehearsal for a corporate gig. They’d requested a whole bunch of songs Olivia didn’t know, and we only had the one rehearsal for her to get them all down.
Ronald had been in a foul mood because he’d felt put upon. He grumbled that there were any number of vocalists around town who could do the gig, and they’d certainly know all the songs.
Dom, ever patient, snorted.“But they couldn’t sing them like our girlie here.”
She flashed the bassist a huge smile at that.
Ronald made a disgusted face. “Yeah, but she’s a total flake! Maybe we should all chip in and get her a good shrink.”
He always spoke as if she weren’t in the room or couldn’t understand what he said.
I was about to light into him when Olivia stuck her face in front of his and snarled, “You’re just jealous because I do things you can’t. That’s what they say down at the club! If anyone needs a shrink here, it’s you!” She stomped out of the room, and from her pounding feet, I could tell she’d gone straight up to her room and slammed the door.
“Out of the mouths of babes,” Dom said quietly.
That was the only time I ever heard Olivia really speak like an adult.
“You’re ignoring my original question, Mr. Curran,” Shannon said, her chair back and the pad on her lap. She was looking at me pointedly. “I can’t help you effectively if I don’t have the full picture.”
She was getting pissed with my stalling, and really, there was no reason not to give her an answer. After all, legally, Olivia was far past the age of consent. It was just that I felt guilty about what had happened.
“Okay. Yes, I did sleep
with her, but not until right before those guys took her away. It wasn’t something she or I planned. It just happened.”
“And are you in love with her?” When I didn’t answer, she added, “It’s really important that I know these things. I’m not prying just to get my jollies or anything. And remember this: Palmer might well be asking you the same questions next.”
Looking down at my hands, I said, “It’s not easy to talk about. A lot of it is mixed up with the end of my marriage.”
Shannon’s voice sounded kinder when she answered, “I do know what you’re going through, Andy. My own marriage fell apart not that long ago. There are still wounds from it, and I’d be a liar to tell you they’ve completely healed. When my... When my boyfriend Michael and I got together, I was a whole jumble of mixed emotions. It’s normal, I guess.”
“You’re probably right.”
“How did your wife take it?”
“What?”
“You and Olivia.”
“Oddly, not too well, considering that she’s the one who cheated on me then moved out without telling me in advance.”
“Your daughter tells me you have a female friend,” Sandra said when I rang the bell at Jeremy’s house in Oakville one Saturday.
“Is Kate ready to go? I’m sort of pressed for time.”
“As always, you won’t answer a direct question,” my former wife shot back scornfully. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Look, Sandra, why are you ragging on me? You’re the one who kept the big secrets.”
“Well, despite what you said when I moved out, it didn’t take you long to find someone. Kate tells me she’s pretty and rather young.”
“Okay, if it will make you happy, Olivia’s just a singer the trio has started working with, and she didn’t have a place to live, so I told her she could crash at the house while she gets things together. She has her own room, and we’re not involved.”