by Lee Harris
“What you’ve got to do now is let Sister Joseph know what you’ve got and let her take it from there. I’d bet she won’t be too keen on picking her sister as Randy’s mother, but she has to be told what you know.”
“There are two more people I’d like to talk to. I don’t look forward to this, but maybe something will come out of it.”
“Who’s that?”
“Randy’s parents.”
“Not a bad idea.”
“Maybe they know something about her that will turn me in a new direction.”
“I’ll call Joe Fox and get their address. Better still, why don’t we call Arnold? I’d rather deal with him about this than Joe Fox.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.”
I called Joseph first. Like the other nuns, she usually goes to bed fairly early, although her work often keeps her up later. She sounded unruffled, exactly like herself, which made me feel good. She told me about her meeting with Arnold this morning, the things they had discussed, none of which had anything to do with Randy Collins.
“I couldn’t ask for a better advocate,” she said. “He remembers everything I’ve said, asks all the right questions, knows the law, and is very comforting.”
“That’s all true, but we’ve got to find out who killed Randy or you’re going to have a difficult time.”
“I know that. And I’ve heard from my sister Hope.”
“She wasn’t very happy,” I said.
“I told her you had to ask her all those questions and not to worry about it. I appreciate your not mentioning the reasons for your asking.”
“I wouldn’t do that. It’s up to you to tell people what you want them to know. Do you recall that Hope lived in an apartment for part of the year that you were back home?”
“She mentioned that you asked about that. Are you thinking she gave birth to Randy during the time she lived there?”
“It’s a possibility.”
“It didn’t happen, Chris. My poor Hope. She wanted so much to have a baby of her own and they gave her a hysterectomy. You can’t imagine how sad that made her, made all of us. If she had had a child, she would never have given it away.”
“There’s another candidate,” I said. “A woman who worked at Fine and Houlihan when you were there.”
“You think one of those people could have used my name?”
“Why not? Who would ever know? She looks in your bag and finds your Social Security number, your driver’s license number, your birthday.”
“That’s a very interesting idea. There was a pregnant woman at that office.”
“Barbara Sawyer,” I said.
“Barbara, yes. And she wasn’t married. I’m sure she knew I was a nun. They all knew.”
“The problem is, I don’t see any way of getting her to give a blood specimen to check it out.”
“Yes, that would be quite awkward. Is she married?”
“Yes, and has two children.”
“Did she admit she’d had a child that year?”
“She said it was a boy, but I asked the question badly. She gave birth at Good Samaritan.”
“I think we should put this in Arnold’s capable hands.”
“I’m going to call him, Joseph. I need some information from him. Do you want me to tell him everything I learned?”
“Please do.”
“You sound very good,” I said.
“I have no reason not to feel good. I’m innocent of everything and I have an excellent lawyer. Not to mention my personal private investigator.”
“I’ll keep you posted,” I said.
“So, you’ve been traveling.” Arnold sounded elated.
“I couldn’t see any way to do it from home and the first person I wanted to talk to said it would be easier for her if I came to her house.”
“Hey, it’s always easier if someone gets on a plane and flies to where you are. Very generous of you.”
“I’ve learned a lot, Arnold.”
“What a surprise. Let me in on it.”
I went through it all again, listening to his approving comments and answering his occasional questions.
“It sounds like you have two candidates—and they’re good candidates—for the mother of the deceased.”
“But I don’t see any way to prove that either one of them is or isn’t Randy’s mother.”
“That’s for me to worry about. You’ve done the leg-work and you’ve got lots to show for it. I think you can relax now, or is that asking too much?”
“Much too much. I’m really calling to ask you for information.”
“That’s a switch. Let’s hear it.”
“I’d like to interview Randy Collins’s parents. Do you have their address?”
“I do.”
“Have you spoken to them?”
“No, but it’s not a bad idea. Let me get it for you.”
He left the phone, came back, and gave me their names and address. They lived in New York State, about halfway between New York City and Albany, so their daughter wasn’t far from home when she went to college, but just far enough that she needed to live on campus. I could drive there in a few hours, which meant I could be back on the same day. I was relieved I didn’t have to go back to Ohio, where they had adopted Randy. And even more relieved that they hadn’t migrated west.
I got their phone number from information, got my courage up, and dialed.
21
The arrangement I made with the Collinses was that I would drive up on Sunday afternoon and talk to them. It was Mr. Collins who answered the phone. When he heard who I was, that his daughter had been staying with me at the time of her murder, he was very anxious to get together with me. He and his wife had numerous questions about their daughter’s activities during her last few days and they knew I could fill them in on much of what had gone on.
During the conversation, he left the phone a couple of times to consult with his wife, but she never came to the phone herself. I could hear voices and assumed there were people visiting, making a condolence call for the worst of bereavements.
When the conversation was finally over, I sat with Jack and told him what I had arranged. “I’ll take Eddie with me,” I said. “I’d rather not leave him so soon after I disappeared on him.”
“I’ll drive you up,” Jack said.
“Oh, Jack, that’s such—”
“No sweat. We’ll all go up together and I’ll stay in the car with Eddie while you’re talking to them. You won’t be there more than an hour.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“I’ll whip up something for dinner tomorrow and there’ll be enough for Sunday, too.”
“Are you sure you can take the time?”
“It’s Sunday. I passed the bar. I didn’t bring any work home with me. I’m a free man.”
So that was how we left it. Saturday was a quiet, calm day. Eddie and I went shopping for food, running into Mel as we drove down Pine Brook Road on the way home. After I had put my purchases in the refrigerator, Eddie and I went back down the street to Mel’s house and we sat in the backyard, Mel and I gabbing, Eddie playing with Sari and Noah.
“I haven’t heard a word of scuttlebutt,” Mel said. “The police have been up and down the block, interviewing everyone who lives here. I doubt whether anyone knows anything about that poor girl’s death. It didn’t exactly happen at high noon.”
I told her I was going to talk to Randy’s parents tomorrow.
“What can they tell you? She hadn’t been home for a long time.”
“But she kept in touch. Maybe she said something to them that will give me a lead. I’m sure Detective Fox has talked to them. I want to know what they know.”
“They must be in pretty bad shape.”
“I’m sure they are. I don’t look forward to this, Mel. When I was in Ohio, I had the feeling I was leaving a trail of disaster everywhere I went. I was lucky not to get a dart in my back.”
“You�
�re gutsy, Chris. I don’t know if I could do it.”
“Tell me about the Greiner boys,” I said. “You live next door to them. What are they like?”
“One’s OK, the other’s a little trouble.”
“How so?”
“The older one. I hear him coming home at all hours, not every night, but weekends.”
“Anything worse than that?”
“I’ve heard whispers. I hate to repeat things like that. He may have had a couple of run-ins with the police. What are you thinking of?”
“I’m wondering if someone who knew that the Kovaks leave their back door unlocked could have gone in and picked up the gun.”
“I thought of that myself,” Mel admitted. “It’s funny. The people who live here the longest are still the most trusting, although they complain the most about how the town has changed for the worse.”
“The Kovaks have lived here a long time. They said when they came, there was no reason to lock your doors. My aunt lived here even longer but I can’t remember what she did. I would come down, run over to Greenwillow and visit Gene, then have dinner and go to sleep. I didn’t have keys and locks on my mind. But if a neighbor had stolen the gun, then maybe came home so late that Randy was already up and walking down the street with an ax—”
“And if he’d had something to drink,” Mel added.
“It might add up to accidental death.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to get the police to search the Greiners’ house. They’ll need a warrant and Hal says you can’t just tell a judge you think maybe you’ll find a gun somewhere in that house if you just let me go through it.”
“That sounds like what Jack says. I don’t know, Mel. A girl is dead, a tree is cut down, a gun is missing, and nobody has any answers.”
Mel gave me her famous grin. “But you, my dear friend, are on the way. You’re thinking right. And that’ll get you there.”
I just wondered where “there” would turn out to be.
We drove upstate after mass on Sunday. About noon, we stopped for lunch. Eddie was delighted with the booster seat they brought for him and he ate well. Once Jack grabbed Eddie’s milk glass just as it was about to tip and I went through a pack of napkins keeping the face and the environment reasonably clean and dry. For the most part, Eddie was a good camper.
We had only a short distance to drive to the Collinses’ house and in the time it took to get there, Eddie fell asleep. Jack had brought a book to read so he was set. I leaned over and gave him a little kiss as I gathered my bag and notebook and got out of the car, pushing the door closed quietly so as not to disturb my sleeping child.
The front door to the house was opened by a forty-something man, probably closer to fifty, wearing a tie-less shirt and slacks. We shook hands and introduced ourselves and went into a pleasant room with a skylight at the end of the house. Mrs. Collins was there wearing a black pantsuit, a slim woman with dark hair turning tastefully blond. But if ever a face showed its owner’s feelings, hers did. She looked totally washed out, her eyes almost too heavy to stay open. I expressed my condolences and told both of them that it had been a pleasure meeting their daughter and having her as my guest.
As I had expected, they had at least as many questions to ask me as I had to ask them. I let them begin, answering with almost everything I knew. I had no intention of spreading Joseph’s story if I could avoid it.
When I had told them what they wanted to know, I opened my notebook and began to ask my own questions. They told me that Randy wanted to work in New York City for the summer and that she was looking for a job. That was to make money. Her other objective was to locate her birth mother, a goal she had been pursuing for a couple of years.
“How did she go about it?” I asked.
“We told her the name of the agency through which we had adopted her,” her mother said. “It’s in Cincinnati. We had lived in Ohio and we remembered the name of the woman who had worked with us at the agency. A couple of summers ago, Randy went out there and visited cousins of ours and met that woman.”
“Mrs. DelBello,” I said.
“That’s the one. How did you know?”
“Randy told me. What did she do after she met Mrs. DelBello?”
“She spent the summer there, didn’t she, Bob?”
“She got a job. This Mrs. DelBello gave her a small lead. I think she told Randy what hospital she’d been born in.”
“And then?”
Mrs. Collins smiled. “She was a very determined girl, very persistent. I think she managed to make friends with a nurse or a nursing student to try to get information.”
“It didn’t work,” Bob Collins said. “She came home at the end of the summer very disappointed. But she got herself a job at that hospital the next summer, using our cousins’ address as her own.”
“So they would think she was a local girl looking for a summer job,” I said.
“That’s right. And it worked. They hired her to do something or other, not very exciting work but she didn’t care. It gave her the access she needed, and she went back and spent the summer working there.”
“How did you two feel about her spending all this time and effort on her search?” I asked.
“She knew we loved her,” her mother said in a voice that was a whisper.
I waited while she gathered herself together.
“This was something she wanted to know. We had no objections. After all, we know who we’re descended from, what allergies they have and what things they love and hate. She had every right to know those things, too.” She stopped and looked at her husband.
He picked up the cue and continued. “We assisted her when she needed help, but the truth is, she didn’t need much. She was a very bright girl. She did well in school and when there was something she wanted to learn, she did the research, went to the library, used the computer. But she always knew she had our backing.”
“What did she learn that summer at the hospital?” I asked.
“I guess she had time on her hands—or she made time—while she worked. She went down to the old records room and found the file on her birth. The name of her birth mother was either in that file or she was able to find it by cross-referencing. These were paper documents, you understand. Twenty years ago, hospitals weren’t using computers the way they do today.”
They looked at each other. “She didn’t give us a name,” Mrs. Collins said. “But she told us it had turned out to be someone living in New York State, someone connected with a convent.”
“St. Stephen’s Convent,” her husband said. “It’s not too far from here.”
“I’m familiar with it. Go on.”
Mrs. Collins drank from a glass of water on the table beside her. “There was a nun she was going to talk to but first she wanted to see an ex-nun.”
“I’m the ex-nun,” I said.
They looked at me in surprise. “Then Randy found the ex-nun,” Mrs. Collins said. “Finally. Finally we’re getting some answers.”
“Do you know how she found me?” I asked.
“She probably asked around,” Bob Collins said. “I told you. She was good at digging up facts. Maybe she stopped off at the convent at some point.”
Obviously Randy hadn’t let her parents know where she was those last days of her life and I wasn’t going to tell them things that would distress them. “Did she call you in the days before she died?” I asked.
“Not every day,” her father said, “but frequently enough that we didn’t worry.”
“Did she tell you she had found her birth mother?”
“Not exactly. I’m pretty sure she knew who this woman was but she kept it to herself.”
“She arrived at my house on Thursday and asked if she could stay,” I said. “Later, she told me she was leaving on Sunday. Sunday morning her body was found down the street. Did she tell you what she was going to do on Sunday? Where she was going? Whether she might be meeting someone?”
“It was a little jumbled,” her father said. “But she said she was meeting someone from the convent on Sunday morning.”
I felt a wave of cold pass through me. “Did she give you a name, Mr. Collins?”
“She was very excited and it all came out in a long monologue that was hard to get straight. There was the nun and the ex-nun. If she was staying with you, then it must have been the nun that she was going to meet.”
“I want to ask you about something entirely separate from all this,” I said. I didn’t want to hear any more that would get Joseph into trouble. “Randy was found lying near a tree that had been cut down and it appears she may have cut it down herself. Does that sound like something Randy would have done?”
“She loved trees,” Mrs. Collins said. “What a strange thing, Randy cutting down a tree. It seems crazy. She loved trees and flowers.”
“We’ll find the reason, Mrs. Collins,” I said, “if it turns out to be true.”
“It can’t be true,” her mother whispered. “She was such a good girl.”
“Let me ask you a question,” her husband said, emphasizing the “you.” “When Randy was found, she was wearing strange clothes. Do you know anything about that?”
I hadn’t wanted to talk about it but he had put me on the spot. “When she rang my doorbell, she was wearing the habit of a Franciscan novice.”
They both nearly exploded. “Why would she do that?” Mrs. Collins said, her voice strong.
“She had been at St. Stephen’s. She had apparently taken the habit from the laundry room.”
“But why?”
“I think she felt that I would be sympathetic to a novice, since I’d been connected with the convent for many years. Otherwise, she was just a girl out of the blue standing on my doorstep.”
“This is so strange,” Mrs. Collins said.
“Did she wear it the whole time she was with you?” Bob Collins asked.