The Thanksgiving Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  “What?” Joe said, paling.

  I said nothing, but my stomach didn’t like it.

  “Looks like we’ve got a skeleton here, folks. I think this is the point when we stop working and call in the police.”

  —

  They came pretty quickly, two young men who looked strong enough to wield shovels. They were also pretty excited, never having experienced anything like uncovering human remains.

  Mrs. Lewellyn wept when I told her and refused to come outside. We had built a fire in the woodstove in the living room, and the downstairs was now comfortable enough to walk around in without a coat on. She remained in her chair, determined not to view whatever was being uncovered in her tulip bed. I went out and watched the careful, slower progress being made by the two uniformed officers under Jack’s guidance. The bones were no longer held together, but I could see unpolished fingernails at the ends of fingers, buttons, teeth, a ratty-looking belt with a metal buckle.

  “Hey, look at this,” one of the officers said, leaning over the hole, which was now about three feet deep. He reached down and pulled out a woman’s handbag.

  It was dirty and wet, most likely black before the earth and weather attacked the color. The cop held it out and I walked over and took it from him. “Do you mind if I open it?” I asked.

  “Go ahead. We need to know who it is. I guess it’s a woman, right?”

  I took it from him and went over to the patio table with Jack. I had to carry it with my hand at the bottom because the seams were coming apart. On the table, we got it open without tearing it, and I looked inside, then reached in. A wallet came out first, the kind with a purse to hold coins and several pockets for bills and cards. The first plastic card I pulled out had a name on it.

  “Natalie Miller,” I said.

  “Not Gordon?”

  “Miller,” I repeated. “And here’s a Social Security card. She must have had it laminated. It’s in perfect shape. Natalie Miller.”

  “Keep looking.”

  And then I found it, a New York State driver’s license issued to Natalie Miller, a color picture in the corner. The birth date made her about thirty-four now, and the face was one I had never seen a picture of. I took it inside and showed it to Mrs. Lewellyn. “Is that Connie?” I asked.

  She barely glanced at it. “Not in a thousand years. Is this the girl who’s buried in my garden?”

  “I think so. It’ll take a while to find out for sure, but it’s a pretty safe bet it is.”

  “How’d she get there?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, reluctant to answer with what I believed to be the truth.

  “You think Connie killed her?”

  “I think there’s a very good chance.”

  “Lord in heaven.”

  —

  “Can someone explain to me what’s going on?” Joey Belasco was waiting for me as I came outside, notebook and pen in hand.

  “I’ll try,” I said.

  “I thought we were looking for Connie Moffat.”

  “We were, sort of.”

  “And whose body is this?”

  “A woman named Natalie Miller.”

  “How’d she get here?”

  “Probably she was murdered and buried here about five years ago.”

  “You think Connie did it?”

  “I think it’s likely.” One of the policemen had told us a few minutes earlier that the skull appeared to have been bashed in, probably by a shovel, making everyone very uncomfortable about Mrs. Lewellyn’s tools.

  “So what’s happened to Connie?”

  “I think she’s probably dead.”

  “You know where she is?” He held his pen up, waiting for me to speak.

  “No, I don’t. But I’m pretty sure I know who killed her.”

  —

  “I have made so many stupid mistakes, Jack, I just can’t believe what I’ve done.”

  “Enough,” he said. “It’s only one mistake.”

  “But I did it over and over.”

  “Don’t tell me how dumb you are, OK? You found her. Nobody else even came close. Man, am I hungry.”

  We had driven Mrs. Lewellyn back to her Albany house and then we’d gotten ourselves a room at an inn out of town. It was too late to drive home and we both ached from digging, so we were making a night of it. I was hungry, too, starving, in fact, and we had to hurry down before the restaurant closed. But I was furious at my mistake, repeated over and over, or at least a couple of times. And much as I was now looking forward to dinner and a night with Jack in a romantic inn, I was anxious to get back to New York and clean up the case of Sandy Gordon’s missing wife. But that would have to wait for tomorrow.

  —

  We drove straight to Manhattan when we left the inn on Sunday morning, and continued down to Gramercy Park. In front of Natalie’s old apartment house, Jack sat at the wheel and I got out. Coming down the street was Dickie Foster, children and husband in tow.

  “You looking for me?” she called.

  “Yes. Hi. Hi, Mr. Foster. Nice to meet you. I’m Chris Bennett. Do you have a minute to look at a picture?”

  “Sure. We’ve just been walking around, it’s such a nice day.”

  I took out a copy of the picture of Connie Moffat, aka Natalie Gordon, and handed it to her. “Do you recognize her?”

  “I think so. Paul, look at this.” They put their heads together for a moment. Then Dickie said, “I think this was the girl who roomed with Natalie at the end, before she moved out.”

  “Then this isn’t Natalie.”

  “Oh no. Natalie’s small and blondish, nothing like this. This was a taller woman. I never met her; at least I don’t remember her name.”

  “This is the woman I’ve been looking for,” I admitted.

  “But you said you were looking for Natalie.”

  “I think the woman in this picture killed Natalie and took over her identity. I never realized there were two missing women. You and I were talking about different people. I never showed you the picture or I would have known a long time ago what was going on.”

  “What a story. What do you think happened?”

  “I think this woman killed Natalie around the time of the move. I’d guess Natalie had no intention of moving, but when she got killed, the killer had to go somewhere else to establish her new identity.”

  “Who would kill a nice girl like Natalie?”

  “Maybe someone who wanted a good job and didn’t have the credentials for it.”

  “I think we should move out of this city,” Dickie said.

  “Next year,” her husband said. “I promise.”

  —

  We drove home. Now I knew exactly when and where the transformation had taken place and I had a motive. There might have been more to it than that, an argument, a temper not well controlled, maybe some promises given and then broken. I might never find out, but there was still a chance Connie’s killer knew, and I hoped he would tell me.

  When we got home I went through my notes and then looked up a phone number. We had decided Jack would make the call while I listened on the upstairs phone.

  It rang twice and then a familiar voice answered with, “Hi there.”

  “Hi yourself,” Jack said in a bantering voice. “This Ted?”

  There was silence. Then a far less happy voice said, “Who’s this?”

  Jack and I hung up. I had hit pay dirt.

  —

  Jack tracked down Detective Evelyn Hogan at her home and told her he had information on the disappearance of Natalie Gordon. Then I got on the phone and we agreed to meet the next morning at her office at One Police Plaza.

  She was a nice-looking woman in her late thirties, dressed smartly in a gray suit with a white, collarless blouse, more, I thought, like a woman going to work in industry than a police detective.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Brooks,” she said. “I’m Evelyn.”

  “I’m Chris, Chris Bennett most of the time.”<
br />
  “I hear you succeeded where I tried and failed.”

  “You didn’t fail. You were right as far as you went. I had a lot of time, some very special help, and a lot of luck.” I thought fleetingly of Sergeant Al DiMartino. “I think I know who kidnapped the woman known as Natalie Gordon, but I don’t know what he did with her.”

  “I’m all ears. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “Sure. Black.”

  We talked for some time and I let her Xerox my notes. She was impressed that I’d found the building near Gramercy Park and also that I had dug into the people at Hopkins and Jewell. Her predecessor on the case had made a few phone calls and listed them on the D.D. 5s but had never gone down to see anyone in person.

  “So this is the one,” she said when we reached the point in my notes where his name was.

  “This is the one. It has to be.”

  “Let’s give it a try.” She picked up the phone, dialed, and asked for our suspect. “I see,” she said, doodling on a piece of paper on her desk. “When was that?…Uh-huh. Any forwarding address?…OK. Thanks for your help.” She hung up. “He quit. Didn’t come in one day and they haven’t seen him since. We’ll have to stake out his apartment. You have that address?”

  I had found it in the Brooklyn phone book yesterday and written it down.

  “I’m not calling till we have manpower in place,” Evelyn said. “I don’t want to alert him that we’re on to him. That call your husband made yesterday must have scared him. I hope it didn’t scare him into leaving.”

  “So do I.”

  “We’ll have to get a photo and put out a Want for Questioning, do some digging into his background, former employers, that kind of thing.”

  “I wonder what he’s doing since he left Hopkins and Jewell.”

  “I’d guess he’s found himself another job. It’s pretty hard to live in New York without work. I’ll get the Brooklyn Borough Detective Task Force in on it and assume we’ll make our move when he gets home tonight. You’re sure he has no idea you went upstate over the weekend and found that skeleton?”

  “I’m sure. And it won’t be published till Wednesday. It’s a weekly that covered it.”

  “But there are police records now, and papers pick up that kind of story. I’m going to get the task force moving right away, in case he’s home and tries to make a getaway. Can you identify him for us?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Now I’ve got to ask you some questions, and your answers are very important. I need more than a strong suspicion that this man, Theodore Miller, or whatever name he’s using, is a killer.”

  “Before we go on,” I said, interrupting her, “I’m a little confused. The body we dug up over the weekend isn’t the body of Connie Moffat. How are you going to build a case against Ted Miller if we don’t have a body?”

  “It’s tougher without a body, but it’s been done before and we can do it this time if we have enough evidence, or a corroborative statement from someone who may have witnessed the killing or who Miller may have told about it, maybe with some incriminating details. At this moment I don’t have a case. What I need from you is enough evidence that I can bring him in for questioning and search his apartment. So tell me, what have you got that says he’s our man?”

  I stared at her. Logically it worked, but in terms of solid evidence, I had nothing. “It has to be him,” I said lamely.

  “Tell me why.”

  Everything added up, but I didn’t have anything tangible I could hand her or point to. “I guess it’s all in how I see it. This man with a down-home way of speaking called on Friday and—”

  “He called you?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s it, then. A phone call is evidence. Hold on.” She picked up her phone, made a call, and asked for Billy Houseman. Then she said, “Billy, this is Evelyn Hogan. We still lovers, darling?” She grinned as he replied. “I sure do. Please let me know if this number—” she recited the number in my book “—called—” and she gave him my number. “You bet I’ll hold. I need it five minutes ago.”

  It didn’t take long. She wrote, smiled, honeyed him a little more, and hung up. “He’s our man,” she said with satisfaction. “That’s my guy at the phone company. Takes less time than going through channels and there’s no paperwork. Now, question two. To get a warrant, I have to know what we’re going to find in that apartment.”

  “I don’t have the faintest idea. I think he came to New York, stalked her so cleverly she didn’t know it, and grabbed her on Thanksgiving Day year before last. He’d already lived in the city for some time. I don’t know what he did to her, where he buried her if he killed her—” I really felt kind of dumb, but I knew she was right. Only on television do cops get warrants just by asking for them. In real life they need to know what they expect to find and where they expect to find it. “I suppose he might have kept a memento of his deed, her handbag, her ID.”

  “Good thinking. Then if they find what’s left of the body, it’s harder to identify. Good enough. I think we’re in business.”

  “I hope you find him.” I said it with mixed emotions. He had the best motive for murder I could think of; he was killing his sister’s killer.

  “We will. We know who he is now. I suppose you don’t walk around with a cellular phone in your bag, so keep in touch with me. I can leave a message for you at home. Meantime, I’m going to call around in Indiana and see what I can find out there.”

  I left and made my way over to Sixty-fourth Street. Seconds after I rang Olive’s bell, a voice came through the intercom asking me who I was. When I responded, the door buzzed open.

  Upstairs, a visiting home care worker opened the door for me with a smile and took me to the living room, where Olive sat on the sofa, dressed, her face made up, her hair clean and tidy.

  “You look wonderful,” I said.

  “I feel pretty good. Hospitals don’t agree with me. And Amelia here is a big help.”

  “Are you, as they say, ambulatory?”

  “Can I walk? Oh, sure. I’m really feeling pretty good today.”

  “Suppose we have lunch at the Tavern on the Green.”

  “The Tavern on the Green,” she repeated, almost with wonderment. “I haven’t been there for years. Longer than that.” She smiled, looking like an older, tougher, thinner version of my mother. “I don’t know if I can walk the three blocks or so.”

  But she hadn’t said no. “I’ll get a cab to pick us up downstairs and drop us in front of the restaurant.”

  “That’d be great, Kix.”

  The cabbie thought we were nuts, but he drove us to the restaurant, which was just inside Central Park three blocks north of the corner where I had first laid eyes on Aunt Olive. We had a table with a view of the park, and Olive ate as though she was very hungry. I guess I was born an optimist, but watching her, talking to her, I knew she had months, maybe years, ahead of her.

  We talked about a lot of things, places she had visited—she had spent most of her vacations traveling—people she had run into, known, loved. We never mentioned my mother or my grandparents. When we were finished, after several cups of coffee and sweet desserts, we taxied back to her building and I helped her up to the apartment. She was tired by then, ready to lie down for a nap. She refused my offer of help but thanked me warmly for the lunch and the company. At the door, we hugged each other.

  I never saw her again.

  28

  The call from Detective Hogan came after nine o’clock that night. “Chris? Evelyn Hogan here. We’ve got him in custody.”

  My heart did strange things. Since we’d uncovered the body of the real Natalie Miller, I had developed so much sympathy for Ted, her brother, that part of me hoped he would be gone. “Tell me,” I said.

  “We got the warrant and I had the Borough Task Force detectives waiting when he got home from work. We’d already gotten into his apartment and found what we were looking for.”

  “Her hand
bag?”

  “Everything of importance that was in it, but he must have trashed the bag itself. Her wallet has a snapshot of her in a wedding dress and her husband next to her.”

  “It’s very sad,” I said. “Can I talk to him?”

  “Come on down tomorrow.”

  “What about the other guy?”

  “Say, he’s something else. ‘How ya doin’?’ and all that. We picked him up, too, but we don’t have enough to hold him. He said he and Miller kind of traded identities when they hooked up in New York, at least so that Miller could get his job.”

  “Does Miller have a lawyer?”

  “The court’ll appoint one. He’s not what I’d call rich. And he’s pretty depressed.”

  “I’ll be down tomorrow afternoon.”

  —

  I drove down right from the college, munching a tuna fish sandwich as I drove. Evelyn had arranged an interview room for me at the Sixtieth Precinct in Brooklyn as a special favor since I had contributed to the case. I sat down in the empty room and waited only a few minutes. Then the door opened and Steve Carlson, Natalie’s friend at Hopkins and Jewell, walked in. He looked pale and tired, his hands cuffed behind him, his hair wild.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “You figured it out.”

  “It was the phone call that clinched it,” I said, “the one your friend made last week. I hadn’t given my number to many people and I couldn’t believe Martin Jewell had gone looking for Natalie’s old apartment house or that Arlene had hired someone to play the brother. It didn’t make sense. It had to be someone who had known her and lost track of her. When your friend called, I knew he’d gotten the number from someone and I didn’t believe his story that it came from the Indiana newspaper. It was just too farfetched. Also, it was my husband who called them to place the ad, and he’s pretty careful about throwing around our phone number. I figured you’d asked him to call, pretending to be her brother.”

  “I shouldn’t’ve had him call.”

  “It would have occurred to me eventually that you had gotten a job with Hopkins in order to befriend the new Natalie. How did you know she worked there?”