The Mother's Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  “I’m sorry to have upset you. There is one other thing. I’d like to talk to Little B.”

  “No one calls him that anymore except family. He’s Bart now. He’s married. I can give you that number, too. Is that all?”

  I got up and followed her to the atrium and waited there while she went to a room beyond the dining room. She came back with another square of paper. I thanked her and apologized again for upsetting her, but she didn’t smile. She was clearly distressed and I thought she might call Joseph tonight and ask what all this was about. Joseph would probably guess what I was after. If she chose to tell her sister, that was her business. I was glad to have gotten the information I now had in my notebook and on the two squares of paper. There was more work to do.

  18

  I drove to the hotel, checked in, then called Jack and brought him up to date. Then I called Mary Short who invited me to come over this evening. Before I went downstairs to have dinner, I called Bart Bailey and talked to his wife. Bart hadn’t come home from work yet but he would be there around six or so and then they would have dinner. I told her I wanted to talk to him and she said they weren’t going anywhere tonight, so it was still possible I could see him after I spoke to Mary Short.

  As I ate dinner in the hotel restaurant, I thought about Hope McHugh as the possible mother of Randy Collins. Suppose Hope had cut her hair short. In fact, I had no idea whether she wore it short or long twenty years ago. I had seen no old pictures in her house. Suppose she didn’t wear makeup. Suppose she wore the kinds of skirts and blouses she had run up for Joseph to wear to work. And why not? If she could make them for her sister, she could make them for herself. She could have easily installed a phone in the apartment she shared with Mary Short in the name of Katherine Bailey. No one asked for identification when you got a telephone. You put down a deposit and paid your bills. When I moved into Aunt Meg’s house, I had the name changed on the bill with no trouble at all. In fact, I noticed that the bills that came to the house were addressed to Uncle Will, who had died many years before. As long as the bills were paid, nobody cared.

  The more I thought about it, the more plausible it became. Hope had lived in the same house with Joseph for much of the year that Joseph was here. She could easily have looked in Joseph’s bag, found her Social Security number, if she needed it for the adoption agency, and any other documents she might have required. I wished I could have seen the hospital file but I knew I couldn’t get access to that without a court order—or the way Randy Collins had, by getting a job at the hospital and looking at it herself.

  When I finished my dinner, I went upstairs, grabbed my coat since it was a chilly evening, checked at the desk on how to get to the Shorts’, and took off.

  “I’ve known Hope forever,” Mary said as we sat in her living room. In a nearby room, where her husband was sitting by himself, a television set was making a constant noise.

  Mary Short was tall, something of a contradiction, and wore jeans and a cotton sweater adorned with a beautiful silver pendant on a black cord.

  “Hope told me you shared an apartment for a few months about twenty years ago.”

  “That’s right. It was a lot of fun, the only time I ever lived in my own place. I had a job in Cincinnati and I roomed with someone else for a while and then my roommate announced she was getting married and she moved out a couple of weeks later, leaving me with a rent bill I couldn’t manage.”

  “And a lease you couldn’t get out of,” I volunteered.

  “That, too. So I called Hope and she asked her parents and they said since it was me, she could do it. She was old enough to do what she wanted, but she was a good daughter.”

  “She’s a lovely person,” I said. “Do you remember if she had her own phone when she shared that apartment with you?”

  Mary pressed three fingers against her lips, thinking. “I think she had one put in after the first month. I had a boyfriend—it was my future husband—and we talked incessantly. Hope couldn’t even call home without asking me to get off.” Mary rolled her eyes and laughed. “Now I scream at my daughter for doing the same thing.”

  “How was her health during the time you lived together?”

  “Hope had problems. It was very sad. She was in pain, she missed work sometimes, she saw doctors. I can’t say she was in good health, but she never lost her spirit.”

  “How did she wear her hair?” I asked.

  “We all had it long for a while. It was the style. Then we both went out and cut it short. We looked much better and the sink stayed a lot cleaner.” She laughed again.

  “Was it short while she lived with you?”

  “We cut it while we lived together. I remember that.”

  “Did she leave the apartment for any period of time?”

  “She went back to her parents’ sometimes on the weekend.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all I remember.”

  “Mary, I’m going to ask you something that may shock you but I’d appreciate an honest answer. Did Hope ever give birth to a baby?”

  “No. Hope? No. No. Why would you ask such a thing?”

  “It’s important. Did she ever look pregnant?”

  “Never. No.”

  “What happened when the lease expired?”

  “I got married.”

  “And moved out?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened to Hope?”

  She looked very serious now, the sparkle in her eyes gone. “I think she moved out, too. I’m not sure. Why are you asking these questions? What would ever make you think that Hope—she can’t even have children. They gave her a hysterectomy. It was the end for her. She’s never really gotten over it.”

  “Did you ever see her phone bills?” I asked. “Did you ever see the envelopes they came in?”

  She shook her head, clearly bewildered. “I don’t know. Maybe. She usually came home first, I think. I don’t know.” She looked confused, as though wondering where these strange questions were leading.

  “I just wondered if the phone bill was in her name.”

  “Who else’s name could it have been in? Her parents didn’t pay for it.”

  “Did Hope have a boyfriend while you lived together?”

  “Hope always had boyfriends,” she said without stopping to think. “She may have met her husband during that time. The truth is, I was in love and I was self-centered enough to think about very little except myself. If I’d been a better roommate, I wouldn’t’ve hogged the phone the way I did.”

  “What’s her husband like?”

  “He’s wonderful. Kind, devoted, rich, although that came a little later. He adores her. I couldn’t imagine her marrying anyone better. And he knew when he married her that there would be no children.”

  “I’m a little surprised that they didn’t adopt a child.”

  “That was their decision. They didn’t want to.”

  “I don’t have anything else to ask you,” I said. “I appreciate your candor.”

  “I wish I understood what you were after.”

  “It’s complicated and I’m not at liberty to say any more than I have.”

  She showed me to the phone and I called Barton Bailey’s number. Bart was home and would be happy to see me.

  The Baileys were a nice young couple, both of them younger than I. They lived in a small house with a one-car garage and one car outside in the driveway. The three of us sat in the living room, Wendy slightly apart from us in a comfortable chair.

  “My cousin Katherine called and said I might hear from you,” he said, looking at me warmly. He was much too tall to be called Little anything but I noticed his wife called him B. I stuck to Bart.

  “She’s been busy calling,” I said. “I’m trying to get some facts together and I can’t tell you much about why. I just hope you’ll be forthright.”

  “It’s my middle name,” he said with a grin, and I noticed Wendy smiled, too.

  “Do
you remember the year your father died?”

  “Oh, yeah. I still think of it as the worst year of my life.”

  “Katherine came home that year. I’m told she came because your dad was sick.”

  “At the time, I had no idea why she was back. But at some point I think I realized that’s why she came. That was a long time after. Everybody loved my father. I couldn’t exaggerate that. His death left such a big hole in the family, they still haven’t recovered.”

  “That’s the way your cousins talk about him,” I said.

  “And he and Katherine were special friends.”

  The phone rang and Wendy got up and went to the kitchen. When she answered, she pushed the door shut.

  “She said as much to me,” I said.

  “I brought down some albums when I heard you were coming. You interested in family pictures?”

  “I’d love to see them.”

  He sat next to me on the sofa and opened one large, fat album that started with black-and-white pictures. “That’s Dad when he was three,” he said. He pointed out his grandparents, his father as he grew older, the cousins Katherine, Hope, Betty, and Tim where they appeared. There were a lot of pictures of B.G. and Katherine together, one with his arm around her as they sat on the ground with a picnic basket nearby.

  Color pictures started to appear. B.G. was there with a number of girls. “That’s my mom,” Bart said pointing to one. “That’s around the time they met.”

  “She was a good-looking girl,” I said. The girl in question had a great smile, a lot of hair, a very thin figure. “But you look like your dad.”

  “I know. I don’t know what happened between them. She up and moved out one day. Dad always said, ‘People change.’ I kept wondering why, but I never got an answer. She just didn’t want to live here anymore, didn’t want to be his wife, didn’t want to be my mother.”

  “It must have been very hard for you.”

  “It still is,” he said, his voice wavering.

  We went back to the pictures. He turned a page and I saw Joseph wearing the habit of a novice. “Oh!” I said with pleasure and surprise.

  “Yeah, there she is when she decided to become a nun.”

  “Was that after your dad married?” I asked.

  “It must have been. There are some pictures somewhere of her graduating from college. That’s when she decided to become a nun. If you figure out the years, Dad was married by then.” He pulled over a smaller album and began to leaf through it. “See? Here’s Katherine graduating. And there she is in the habit.”

  The pictures were carefully dated and he was right; she had graduated first and become a novice afterward. The album was on my lap. I turned a page, then another. It wasn’t a very large book but I saw that it contained only pictures of Katherine and B.G. I didn’t say anything, just kept turning the pages. There were several blank ones at the end. B.G. had died before filling them. The last pictures were from the year Katherine had come home. She was wearing secular clothes, something I had never seen, but her face looked very much as it had the first time I had met her, when I was thirteen or fourteen and visited the convent. These had not been taken very long before my first visit.

  “Seen enough?” he asked as I stared at the last page.

  I said, “Yes,” with my heart pounding.

  “They had what you’d call a special relationship. For my father it lasted forever. They never got as close as my mom and dad did, but they never got as far apart either.”

  “They were cousins,” I said softly, feeling an incredible pain. “I have a cousin I’m very close to.”

  “I think I’ve told you everything,” he said.

  “Yes.” I could hardly find my voice. “I think you have.” I handed him the small album, almost reluctant to let it go. “It’s late for me to be up. I should be getting back to the hotel.”

  He took my hand and held it. “I’m glad you came. I haven’t looked at those pictures for a long time.”

  His wife came out of the kitchen just as I had buttoned my coat. I wished them both well.

  Back at the hotel I called Jack and told him much of what I had learned. The older sister, Betty, I had ruled out completely as the mother of Randy Collins. But Hope was a definite possibility, in spite of the fact that her roommate denied she had ever been pregnant. I told him a bit of my conversation with Little B., but not all of it.

  “Doesn’t sound like he added much,” Jack said.

  “Not so far as who gave birth to Randy.”

  “Any chance it could have been Sister Joseph?”

  I gave what must have sounded like a moan. “I can’t rule it out, but it’s very unlikely.”

  “But who would have been the father?” Jack asked. “She took a leave to be with a sick cousin, she got a full-time job. You can’t tell me she had an affair with someone she met at work. I may not know her as well as you but I can tell you she’s not the kind of woman who’d bed down with a guy she met on the job.”

  “She isn’t, and she didn’t. At this moment, the sister’s the best possibility. She even had a phone in her own name and her roommate had one in hers.”

  “So she could have listed herself as Katherine Bailey.”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe I can trace the number for you.”

  “The phone number? After twenty years?”

  “Just a maybe. Let me see what I can do. And I have a suggestion. Your idea that Randy’s mother could be one of Sister Joseph’s sisters is a very good one. Have you thought that maybe it could have been someone at work? Someone who knew she was a nun and would be going back?”

  “It crossed my mind. Maybe I’ll go back to Fine and Houlihan tomorrow morning. Then with luck I can get on the same plane I didn’t take tonight.”

  “I think it’s worth your while asking.”

  “How’s my little sweetheart? Did he ask for me?”

  “Nah. We had a guy evening, good dinner, coupla beers. Your name never came up.”

  “I love you, too,” I said, stifling a giggle.

  19

  It was a good suggestion to follow up on. From the size of Fine and Houlihan, there could have been several people working in the clerical and administrative parts of the business. I had seen a number of people at computers when I walked from reception to Mr. Fine’s office. Twenty years ago those computers would have been typewriters and maybe there would have been fewer of them, but there was certainly the possibility that two or three other people had worked in the area when Joseph was there. And no doubt they all knew each other, talked to each other, probably even lunched together.

  I took a shower and curled up on the bed with a couple of pillows behind me, my notebook on my lap. If Hope McHugh had been Randy’s mother, what did that tell me about who had murdered Randy? Nothing, I thought. The idea that Hope had found out that Randy was at my house and had come to Oakwood from Ohio was so preposterous, so incredible, I put it out of my mind. The only way that Randy’s natural mother might be her killer was to believe that the mother knew who Randy was, where she was living, and had followed her to Oakwood with a gun intending to threaten Randy or do harm to her. Eventually, even if it were possible, it was beyond the limits of probability, not to mention the fact that murdering one’s child was inconceivable to me.

  But Detective Joe Fox could make a good case that Joseph was both the mother and the killer. As he would see it, Joseph would be so concerned with her position as Superior of St. Stephen’s that she would do anything to protect herself from exposure of the truth. And he could concoct a scenario in which Randy had spoken to Joseph and told her of their purported relationship, after which Joseph had come down to Oakwood Sunday morning and killed Randy. Perhaps he would even decide that I was the carrier of the information. If he checked my phone bill, he would find a long call to St. Stephen’s, the one I had made to Grace. In his mind, that could have been a call to Joseph. All calls were routed through the switchboard so there was no rec
ord of who had been the final person to pick up. And since the nuns had refused to cooperate with him, he had no reason to believe that Grace was the person I had spoken to.

  None of these ideas gave me much hope. I got up in the morning thinking the same thoughts that had been running through my mind as I fell asleep the night before. After breakfast, I optimistically checked out, put my bag in the trunk of my little car, and drove to Fine and Houlihan.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Fine is out of the office today,” the receptionist said when I came in.

  “Is Mr. Houlihan here?”

  “He is but—” She looked at her watch. “Let me see if he has time for you.”

  Apparently he did because she led me through the center work area to an office the size and shape of his partner’s, but at the other end of the row.

  “Miss Bennett, is it?” Jerry Houlihan asked expansively. He was one of those good-looking Irishmen with an enviable head of white hair, very blue eyes, and a wonderfully warm smile. He could probably sell me anything if I stayed with him long enough.

  I shook his hand and started to tell him about my visit with his partner yesterday, but he interrupted me.

  “I know all about it. Abe and I had a chitchat before we went home last night. It was Katherine Bailey you were asking about, is that right?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “Lovely young lady. They don’t make ’em better than that. You know she was a nun?”

  “I’m a friend of hers, Mr. Houlihan. I’ve known her for a long time.”

  “Wonderful girl. What can I tell you about her?”

  “Actually, I wanted to ask about other young women who worked in this office at the same time as Katherine.”

  “You’re out to tax my memory, I see.”

  “Maybe there are records you could check. Maybe there’s someone in the office from—”

  He was shaking a finger at me. “I never forget a face. I never forget an employee. Tell me what you’re looking for.”