by Lee Harris
“It’s possible. We should certainly look into it.”
“Last semester we were filled to capacity but one student left at Christmas and didn’t come back and one girl fell ill a month or so ago and went home. It may have been mono or something like that and her family thought she should rest at home.”
“I’d like to see those rooms when we’ve finished our lunch.”
“That’s easy.” She looked through the folder. “And there are two rooms under renovation, which means there are men in there weekdays between nine and five.”
“I’ll look at those, too.”
Joseph made some notes. “If your suspicions are true, it would make her sound quite devious.”
“Resourceful,” I said.
“Where would she have gotten the key to such a room?”
“Where did she find my name and address? Where did she find a novice’s habit?”
“You’re right. She was resourceful. I hope we find out who she was. She must have a family somewhere.”
I agreed. Whoever they were, wherever they lived, they would want to know what happened.
12
Armed with the master key, I walked over to the college dormitory when we finished our lunch. It was the end of the semester and girls were finishing exams and getting ready to leave for the summer. I went up to the second floor and down the long hall, hearing pieces of conversations from the rooms I passed. From one came the sound of wailing: “I’ll never get it. I’ll never get it. Why do I have to take this stuff? I’m not going to be a chemist if I live a hundred years.”
I had felt much the same way myself about chemistry but I had managed to pass. The room I was looking for was the last one on the right, a corner room with, as it happened, a window on each outside wall, a very desirable place to live.
“She’s not there,” a girl said, and I turned.
“Who isn’t?” I asked.
“Amanda Snyder. She got mono and she left.”
“Anyone else been using her room?”
“Not that I know of.”
She watched me as I turned the key. “Thank you,” I said, letting myself in.
It was about the size and shape of the nuns’ rooms and with similar furniture. I opened the closet and found it empty. The bed had a cover on it but there were no sheets underneath. The desk had nothing on it but a lamp in one corner, and the drawers were empty except for dust and ink stains and eraser tidbits. I carefully removed each drawer and looked underneath, then into the drawer space itself. Nothing. A similar search of the dresser yielded only an old stamp, not enough to post a current letter. I got down on the floor and peered under the bed. Dust floated there and a piece of paper lay among the balls. I stretched my right arm as far as I could and just barely touched it. I flattened myself, got my shoulder under the bedframe, and snared the paper between my first two fingers and pulled it out.
I blew the dust off, making myself cough. The note was written in ballpoint and said, “Dr. Cabot, 3 P.M. Thursday.” Probably the appointment that led to the student’s departure from the college. But just in case, I put it in my bag, brushed myself off, and left the room.
The two rooms being renovated were on the third floor as was the other empty room. I went up the concrete stairs and found the two rooms side by side in the middle of the corridor. Two men were in the first room I reached, talking and working. I stepped inside.
“Hi. Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Sure.” The older man came down off a ladder where he had been standing with a paint roller, working on the ceiling. “Something we can do for you?”
“Just a couple of questions. What time do you get here in the morning?”
“We don’t come till nine. The Reverend Mother doesn’t want us around while the girls are dressing and getting ready for class.”
“And when do you leave?”
“Five, maybe four-thirty. Depends how we’re doing.”
“What have you been doing besides painting?”
“There was some water leakage. We had to find it, stop the leak, and repair the damage. This wall here was replastered like the one in the room on the other side.”
“How long’ve you been working on that?”
“ ’Bout a month. These rooms were empty because of the water.”
“I want to ask you a funny question. Is there any chance someone could have been living in one of these rooms at night while you were working on them during the day?”
“In here?” He looked around at the four walls as the other man put his tool down and stood up. “I don’t know how anyone could live here. There’s no bed or nothin’. We got drop cloths all over. It smells of paint now and it smelled of plaster last week.”
The younger man rubbed his hands on his work clothes. “You think someone’s been camping out in here?” he asked.
“I thought it was a possibility.”
“I don’t think so.”
I took the picture out of my bag. “Either of you ever see her? This was taken after she died.”
“She died?” the older man said.
“Over the weekend.”
They both looked at it, then gave it back, the older man distinctly paler. I thanked them and looked for the last empty room. It was just on the other side of the stairway. The key got me in and I closed the door behind me.
This room, too, had a covered bed with no bedding, a desk, and a chair. The desk was empty. I went over to the dresser and pulled open one drawer after another. In the top drawer I found some socks and underwear. In the second drawer there were a couple of nightshirts, two cotton blouses, and a pair of black sweatpants. The other drawers were empty. I repeated my previous search, drawers out, over, inspect cavity, with the same result: no secrets.
I went to the closet and found a raincoat, a pair of sneakers, and a skirt. There was no light in the closet so I got down on my haunches and felt around the floor. Near the back wall I felt something. Pulling it out I saw that it was a backpack-style purse. By this time I was feeling very excited. I slipped on the gloves I had in my pocket, opened the purse, and went through it. There was a worn wallet with no money. I assumed the money had been transferred to Tina’s bag. There was a ballpoint pen, some tissues, a mirror from a hardware store, a half ticket that could have come from a local movie, a couple of paper clips and safety pins, and two envelopes that looked like handwritten personal letters.
Before opening them, I went through the wallet carefully. Sure enough, there was a Social Security card for Randy Collins. I put everything back in the bag and took it with me. As I locked the door, a girl walked by.
“Excuse me,” I said, stopping her. “Have you ever seen this girl? She died over the weekend.”
She took the picture in her hand and looked at it seriously. “Was this taken after she was dead?”
“Yes.”
“I think I’ve seen her around. I don’t know who she is.”
“Thank you.” I tucked the picture in my bag and went down the stairs to the first floor and out to the campus. The spring air was delightful and I inhaled deeply as I hurried along the walks to the Mother House.
Eddie was sleeping soundly in Angela’s room. Because he was lying on a bed, she was nervous about leaving him, so she sat in her room and read while he slept. When I tapped on her door, she tiptoed out and told me how good he had been. I always know if I need my spirits boosted, this is the place to come.
From there I went to Joseph’s office. She was on the phone but got off quickly.
“Look what I found,” I said, setting the backpack on her desk.
“Our imposter was living in one of those rooms?”
“She sure was, the one on the third floor. She has clothes hanging in the closet and in the top two drawers of the dresser. There’s no question in my mind she intended to come back there.”
“Amazing. I’ve been congratulating myself on our security and here someone has breached it in a very big way.”
>
“Very big indeed. But it’s because she was young and female that she was able to do it. She must have had a key for the room because it was locked when I got there. I guess she just kept quiet, didn’t have a radio or TV, no phone, nothing to make noise. If she came and went while the downstairs doors were unlocked, who would notice her? She was the right age, she wore the same kinds of clothes as the students. I asked a girl in the hall if she recognized her and she said she’d seen her around.”
“But she didn’t say she lived in that room and her name was whatever.”
“No. And the name on her Social Security card is Randy Collins.”
“Chris, this is really a huge step forward. Do you have an address or is that too much to ask?”
I put my gloves back on and Joseph laughed. I took out the two envelopes in the backpack. “I haven’t looked at these yet.” I slid a letter out of the smaller one and read it aloud: “Sweetheart, Have a happy birthday. Spend this any way you want. Dad.”
“Is there a return address?”
“No. And the postmark’s very faint. But it’s addressed to Miss Randy Collins on a street in Albany.”
“What’s the other letter, Chris?”
“The envelope’s empty,” I said, sounding my disappointment. “It’s addressed to the same place and the postmark is Albany.”
“I bet our mysterious Randy Collins is a student up there, maybe at the Teachers College. I think their semester ends a little before ours.”
“So she took her birthday check from her father and got on a train down the Hudson. Maybe she told her parents she wanted to visit New York City before coming home for the summer.”
“Let’s see that envelope from her father,” Joseph said. “I’ve got a magnifying glass in here somewhere. Maybe we can figure out where the letter comes from.”
She rummaged around and pulled out a round glass with a black wooden handle. It looked very old. The glass was held in place with a heavy brass collar. Then she joined me on the other side of the desk so we could look through it together.
“I’ve never really gotten used to these two-letter abbreviations,” she said. “I suppose it’s a sign of age but I really liked the old way better. What do you think?”
“I think they should have inked their meter,” I said. “It’s N something. Could be New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire.”
“I agree. The city is illegible. I suppose the police have ways of bringing out the print.”
The phone on her desk rang and she leaned across to pick it up. It was a short conversation. “Detective Fox is here, Chris,” she said when she was finished.
“Oh dear.”
“Well, you’ve done his work for him. You’ve found out who she is and where she was living. I’d better get downstairs and make sure this is done in an orderly way.”
“And I’d better pick up my son and get going. I’ll leave the backpack and the master key with you. You can take it from there.”
“I’ll call you if we learn anything. Thanks for coming, Chris.”
I managed to avoid Detective Fox on my way out. Eddie was awake and visiting the Villa with Angela. The Villa is where the retired nuns live and collectively they’re like a group of grandmothers. I wasn’t sure who was entertaining whom more. Eddie didn’t want to leave and I didn’t want him bursting into tears in front of all these women who thought so well of both of us. Finally, two of them said they would walk us to the car and Eddie held their hands as we went.
“They stole him from me,” Angela mourned.
We both laughed. “We’ll be back. I hear the detective on the case has arrived. He’ll probably be asking everyone questions.”
“I have no answers,” Angela said. “He can save his time.”
The sun was warm when we got to the parking lot. Eddie gave a lot of kisses and I did the same. Stuffed in his bag of tricks were cookies and brownies for later. We both waved as I backed out of my spot and started out of the convent grounds unseen, I hoped, by the good detective.
Eddie was running around in his pajamas, waiting to see whether Daddy or bedtime would arrive first, when the doorbell rang. Through the living-room window, I could see a car parked in front of the house. I opened the front door and Detective Fox was standing on my doorstep.
“OK, Mrs. Brooks,” he said, raising his hands in a classic Wild West gesture of surrender, “you win. Can we talk about it?”
“Win what? Come on in. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You were at St. Stephen’s today, right?”
“Yes. I drove up this morning with my son.”
“And you told the nuns not to talk to me.”
“What? No. I would never do that.” I felt confused. “Let’s sit down. Would you like some coffee?”
“I would love some coffee. It’s been a hell of a day.”
I showed him to the family room and told Eddie who he was. Although I found Detective Fox rather disarming, Eddie found him a little scary. He clung to me as I made coffee. Finally, he said he wanted to go to bed and I took him upstairs.
When I came down the coffee was ready. I hadn’t eaten yet but I joined the detective with a cup. “The nuns wouldn’t talk to you?” I said.
“Sister Joseph did. She showed me the room you’d found where our victim apparently was squatting. That was a good idea you had, looking in plain sight. Now at least we know who she is and we’re going to notify her family. But no one else up there would say a word. They said they didn’t know anything or that it was your case and you’d take care of it.”
I stifled a giggle. “They really don’t know anything,” I said, trying to soothe his feelings. “I only talked to a couple of the nuns and they didn’t have much to tell me. I suspect the victim, Randy Collins, stayed in that room at night and left in the morning when most of the other students were gone.”
“You’re telling me you didn’t ask them not to cooperate.”
“I would never do that,” I said. “My husband is a police officer. It would be disloyal of me to do something like that. And I have no reason to.”
“Let me ask you something I haven’t asked you before. When did you call Sister Joseph yesterday to tell her that a girl you thought was a novice had been murdered?”
“I’m not sure. It was all so hectic. It was after we came back from mass.”
“So what are we talking? Nine? Ten? Eleven?”
“I think we went to church at nine, so I would have called her about ten, maybe a little later.”
“And she was there when you called.”
“Yes.”
“OK, so by ten she was back at the convent.”
“What do you mean, ‘back at the convent’?”
“She wasn’t there earlier.”
“Detective Fox, you said the nuns wouldn’t talk to you. Now you tell me they said Joseph wasn’t at the convent yesterday morning. I don’t understand.”
“Father Kramer didn’t see her. He talked to me.”
I felt the seeds of panic inside me. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying she can’t account for her time Sunday morning. I’m saying she could have been in Oakwood early Sunday, gotten back to the convent by the time you called, and come down here to identify the dead girl.”
“Why would she have been in Oakwood early Sunday morning?” I asked, keeping my voice as even as I could manage.
“You’re the smart one. Put it together. This girl knew something that could damage the sister’s life and career. The girl calls the sister and says she’s willing to talk about it, the sister drives down, maybe picks up the girl in front of your house early in the morning, and—”
“I don’t want to hear any more of this,” I said, feeling angry and betrayed. “Sister Joseph told you something, a fictional story concocted by a disturbed young woman, in order to keep me from being put on the spot. Now you’re using that story, for which you have not the slightest proof of its truth, to make her s
eem like the worst sort of criminal. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Calm down, Mrs. Brooks. Let’s not forget that a girl was murdered, that someone aimed a gun at her and pulled the trigger. She’s dead. Let’s keep that in mind. Your husband’s prints are all over the ax that was found out by that tree.”
“So were hers,” I interjected.
“So were hers, I’ll grant you that. But I can make a case that your husband killed her. He not only owns guns, he knows how to use them.”
“That’s absurd.”
“To you it may be absurd. To me it’s a line of inquiry. But I don’t think your husband had anything to do with it. I do think there’s a possibility that Sister Joseph, who has a strong motive to keep that girl quiet, could have.”
I can hardly explain how I felt. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to kick him out of my house and lock the door after him permanently. I think I actually wanted to hit him. I did none of those things. I controlled my mouth, my breathing, and my hands. I made sure I did not cry, which would have embarrassed me to no end. I was about to say something when he said, “I’ve made you very angry.”
“Angrier than I can remember ever feeling. I think you should leave, Detective Fox. You have totally betrayed my trust and Sister Joseph’s. I am through cooperating. I have nothing else to say to you so there’s no reason for you to be here.”
“I wanted to congratulate you on finding where that girl was staying.”
“You don’t have to congratulate me for anything.”
“It shows you’re smart. I’m not sure I would have thought of looking on campus for her.”
“I have experience. I use it.”
“We’re not charging anyone at the moment. But if we do, I’ll be back.”
“Forget it. You’re not welcome here.” I stood and went to the living room, the detective following me.
“I have a feeling I’ve handled this badly,” he said.
“Take your feelings and go, please. I hope you come to your senses. You will never find Randy Collins’s killer if you continue looking for him at St. Stephen’s. That’s a guarantee.” I opened the front door. “Good night, Detective Fox.”