Murder In the Past Tense (A Giorgio Salvatori Mystery Book 2)

by Lynn Bohart

  “As I said, I was pretty new to the force, but I was the only one here with a college degree – other than our captain. Back then, we didn’t have any detectives. We were too small. When the girl went missing, it became a big deal. Her boyfriend was the son of our most prominent citizen – Royce Martinelli. He owned a lot of property around here. Actually, all over the basin. Office buildings. Apartment complexes. You name it. The captain wanted to treat this case with all the seriousness it deserved, so he assigned me to investigate. Even gave me a new title – Detective,” he said with a smile. “Anyway, Martinelli’s son, Ron, was a star athlete at Pasadena High.”

  He paused and shook his head slightly at an undisclosed memory.

  “And let me guess, Lisa came from the other side of the tracks,” Giorgio said.

  “Right,” he said, looking up solemnly. “As I said, she lived in a small duplex with her single mom. Not such a common thing back then. Divorce was pretty rare, and those who got divorced were often looked down on. But from what the mother said, Lisa had been sexually abused by her step-father when she was in her early teens, and when her mom discovered it, she kicked the bastard out.”

  “So the mother had been married before?” Giorgio asked.

  “Yes. The first husband committed suicide. So the poor woman carried a double stigma.”

  “And the step-dad never went to jail for the abuse?” Swan asked.

  Detective Birmingham glanced over at him. “Back then, those kinds of things were swept under the rug. No one wanted to talk about them. And it would have been the girl’s word against his, anyway. But the mother suffered a lot of guilt about it, I guess. I think that’s why she drank.”

  “So, Lisa didn’t have much supervision?” Swan speculated.

  “No. But I guess she was a good kid. She slept around a bit, but once she started dating Ron, I think that stopped. They were pretty serious — he told us he wanted to marry her.”

  “Did his father know that?” Giorgio asked the obvious question.

  “Not about how serious they were. He allowed his son to date her, I think, because he thought the kid was just getting his rocks off, you know? So it didn’t matter. The father told me at the time that if he’d known how serious the relationship was, he would have stopped it.”

  “Any chance he might have stopped it by making her disappear?” Swan interjected.

  The old man leaned back, thinking. “I’ve wondered about that for over forty years. I just don’t know. Back then, we didn’t have a body. No one knew what happened to her. She just up and disappeared. Then, a few days after she went missing, there was a phone call; it was an anonymous tip to search all the student lockers at the high school.”

  He paused again and Giorgio glanced up at Swan.

  “And?” Giorgio encouraged him to continue.

  “We found her underwear and one of the shoes she’d worn to the prom in little Jimmy Finn’s locker. Her left shoe. Jimmy was a year behind her in school and kind of slow. He lived next door to Lisa and was known to have a crush on her.”

  “What happened?” Giorgio asked.

  “He was arrested. His family didn’t have any money so they assigned a public defender. Some kid right out of law school.” He paused, as if what he was about to say was difficult. “And, also, Jimmy was black. Even though things were changing between blacks and whites back then, the Civil Rights Act had just been passed a few years earlier. People hadn’t learned tolerance, yet. And the fact that he was known to have had a crush on a white girl…well, people rushed to judgment. He was also retarded. Maybe not exactly retarded,” he said with a shrug, “but certainly slow. And he couldn’t explain how those things got in his locker.”

  “So, he went to prison?” Giorgio prodded him

  “Yeah. Died there, too, from what I heard. Hung himself. Like I said… the kid didn’t have a chance.”

  “So what happened to the boy…Ron?” Giorgio wanted to know

  “The family moved to Pasadena less than a year after the girl disappeared. Too much publicity, they said. But if his dad was a bigwig here, he became an even bigger wig in Pasadena. I kept track of them for a while. They lived in a fancy home just off Colorado Boulevard. The father became President of the Tournament of Roses organization and sat on the board of PCC – Pasadena City College,” he clarified. “I think he was even on the board of the museum. Anyway, the old man is gone now. He died of a heart attack several years back. The kid runs the company today with his cousin. I believe the mother is still alive, though. Boy, was she a piece of work.” He shook his head at the memory. “Talk about the Ice Queen…it was all about appearances for her. That’s all she cared about. The old man, too. They didn’t care a whit about the missing girl. They only cared about how the investigation would make their family look.” He glanced up at Giorgio with a sigh and stood up. “Well, that’s the story. You’ll find all my notes in the box. Plus, I’m sure the department has a file somewhere, if you can find it.”

  “Thanks for coming in,” Giorgio said, standing as well. “But if you don’t mind me asking, why did you carry her picture in your wallet all these years?”

  The older man put a hand to his pocket where the picture had resided, as if touching the photo one last time.

  “Because I wasn’t much older than her, I guess. I was only twenty-six at the time she went missing, and I felt like I got to know her during the investigation. I interviewed her mother, the boyfriend, and lots of her friends. It became personal to me. But to the department and the city, it seemed more important to protect the Martinelli family than to figure out what happened to this beautiful girl. And in all the years I worked here, that was the only murder we didn’t solve.” He dropped his chin and gave a short, derisive laugh. “Well, let’s face it…there weren’t too many murders in this town. We had several runaways, but not many murders,” he said, looking up again. “Of course, we didn’t know for sure that this was murder, but we all suspected it. I held out hope that someday I’d see her walking down the street and that she’d had a chance to actually grow up and have a life. I guess that’s why I kept the picture. Just in case.”

  He gave Giorgio a haunted look. This man had bonded with this girl, Giorgio thought, even though he’d never met her.

  “Anyway, I put a slip of paper in there with my contact information in case you need anything else,” he said, gesturing to the box.

  Giorgio reached out and shook his hand. “Thanks.”

  The old detective started for the door, but Giorgio stopped him.

  “Detective Birmingham, even though a jury convicted Jimmy Finn… I get the sense that you brought these records to us for another reason.”

  The old man stopped and stared into space for a moment. Then he glanced at Giorgio.

  “Things are different now. Technology is better, and you guys are trained detectives. And you have a body.”

  “But it sounds like the case was closed years ago,” Giorgio said, with a skeptical edge to his voice. “What do you expect us to do?”

  “Find out what really happened.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “So, whaddya’ think?” Swan asked after the retired detective had left.

  Giorgio’s adrenalin was pumping. The detective had presented them with a challenge. He reached into the box and eagerly pulled out file folders and loose sheets of paper.

  “I say we do a little digging. They closed the case without ever having found the body. And according to Detective Birmingham’s own account, it seemed like they conducted a cursory investigation leading to the arrest of a kid that couldn’t defend himself. Maybe having the body changes things.” Giorgio looked up at his partner. “Why don’t you ask Drew to see what he can find out about the girl’s mother? If she’s alive and hasn’t seen the news, then we owe it to her to let her know we think we’ve found her daughter. Maybe we can also get something of hers to match the DNA. We also need Ron Martinelli’s address.”

  Swan nodded. “I�
�ll go talk to him.”

  When Swan returned, they took the next hour to study Detective Birmingham’s files. McCready provided an address for Lisa Farmer’s mother and they headed out to meet her.

  It was late afternoon by the time they made it to the rundown apartment building in Burbank, a city known to some as the “Media Capital of the World.” Giorgio had never been to Burbank, and as they rolled down the streets, it was clear that while the city might be home to many of the major film studios, the city was more working class than Hollywood or Beverly Hills.

  The two detectives entered Mrs. Farmer’s apartment building on the ground floor and tracked down a long, dim hallway that smelled of cigarette smoke and urine. A small woman dragging an oxygen tank by her side answered the door when they knocked.

  “Mrs. Farmer?” Giorgio asked.

  “Yeah,” she replied, stopping to cough.

  “We’re with the Sierra Madre police,” he said, pulling his jacket aside to show the badge attached to his belt. “I’m Detective Salvatori, and this is Detective Swan. May we come in?”

  Her gray eyes shot him a curious glance, and then she stepped back to allow them into a shabby living room. Giorgio’s nose twitched at the odor of rancid cat food and dirty cat litter. A fat tabby glared at them from a cluttered kitchen counter. Scattered around the room were several ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. There was no Christmas tree and no holiday decorations.

  Mrs. Farmer had not aged well. Her skin sagged and had the mottled look of a heavy drinker. She also breathed through two rubber tubes stuck into her nostrils.

  She didn’t offer them a seat, but rather remained standing in the middle of the room as if to challenge the reason for their visit.

  “Mrs. Farmer,” Giorgio began awkwardly, “we’re here to discuss your daughter, Lisa.”

  She snorted and dropped into a nearby rocker, her baggy housecoat flopping open to reveal a pair of crimson polyester slacks. “What can you tell me that I don’t already know?” she rasped, inhaling the oxygen as she spoke.

  Giorgio chanced a glance at Swan. Swan took out a small pad of paper and a pencil to take notes.

  “I take it you haven’t been watching the news,” Giorgio said.

  She threw out a scrawny arm to gesture around the room. “Do you see a television here?” she said. “I ain’t got money for no TV.”

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this way,” Giorgio said. “But we found a skeleton in an abandoned well, along with some things that may have belonged to your daughter.”

  She settled a vacant look in his direction, and it appeared as if she’d momentarily stopped breathing. Then the glisten of a tear formed in the corner of one eye.

  “Where?”

  “At the monastery in Sierra Madre. They were excavating the property after part of the building was torn down. There was no identification on the remains, but the bones are forty to fifty years old and we know it was a young girl. Detective Cal Birmingham came to see us and gave us the box of evidence from back in 1967.”

  “Detective Birmingham,” she murmured to herself, glancing down at the floor. “He was a good man. He cared about my daughter.” She looked up at them as if really noticing them for the first time. “I’m sorry. Please sit down.”

  She gestured to the lumpy sofa behind them. Swan sat down, perching as far forward on the frame as possible. Giorgio removed the baggie with the girl’s necklace from his coat pocket and handed it to Mrs. Farmer before he also sat down.

  “I was wondering if you can identify this necklace?” he asked.

  She looked at the baggie for a long moment and held her breath. Then, she slowly drew it close to her face and began to weep.

  “I gave this to Lisa the afternoon of the prom as a combination birthday-graduation present,” she cried. “We didn’t have much money. I worked at Kmart and they had these gift sets on sale. So I bought it for her. A necklace and a pair of earrings. She was so happy when I gave it to her. It’s not real silver,” she said with a look of apology, “but she didn’t care. She said it was the best present she ever got.”

  A sob caught in her throat, and she began to cough again. Once the coughing subsided, she continued.

  “Did you find the earrings?” she asked hopefully, her watery eyes searching his.

  “Just one earring,” Giorgio said.

  “Oh,” she murmured with disappointment. “Maybe she lost the other one,” she almost whispered.

  Or maybe the killer had pulled it off and saved it, Giorgio thought to himself. Giorgio and his partner had worked a case in New York where a serial killer had saved one piece of jewelry from each of his thirteen victims. It was one of the things that had helped convict him.

  “I never really thought I’d see her again, you know,” she said wistfully. “I guess I always knew she was dead, even though people kept telling me there was still hope.”

  “Mrs. Farmer, did you believe Jimmy Finn was capable of hurting your daughter?” Giorgio asked.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, the loose folds under her neck flapping. “He adored her. And he liked Ron, too. That was her boyfriend. Jimmy was slow, you know? I mean, he could function okay, but it was like he just couldn’t form his words too good. He wasn’t a big kid, either. Lisa musta been a good two inches taller than him. She was almost five-foot seven. I always wondered how he coulda hurt her. But no one listened to me. Then when they convicted him, I didn’t know what to think.”

  “What about her father?”

  The question made her constrict as if she’d just had an angina pain in her chest. “Step-father, you mean,” she said.

  “Yes,” Giorgio nodded.

  “I don’t know,” she said tersely. “The police questioned him back then and said he had an alibi.”

  “Do you know if he’s still alive?”

  She shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I suppose. I haven’t heard anything different.”

  “Do you know where he might be living?” Swan asked.

  “I haven’t seen him since he showed up twenty years after Lisa disappeared. I don’t know why. He just showed up on my doorstep all of a sudden. He’d gotten remarried and said he owned a junk yard down in Whittier someplace. That’s where he grew up.” She took a deep breath to inhale the oxygen, sputtered a bit and then continued. “If you’ve read the file,” she said, “then you know that he abused Lisa when she was thirteen. I didn’t know it was happening until I noticed a change in her behavior. She was angry all the time and wouldn’t talk to me. At first, I thought it was just the teen years, you know? Anyway, Butch worked the graveyard shift back then and was home during the day.”

  “So he was there when Lisa got home from school?” Giorgio asked.

  She glanced at him with a deep-seated hatred in her eyes. “Yes.”

  Giorgio noticed that her hands had begun to shake, and she hooked her fingers together as if to keep them from getting away from her. After a moment, she released her right hand and found a tissue in the pocket of her housecoat and used it to wipe her eyes.

  “I actually walked in on them one day,” she said in a low voice. “I came home early from work because I wasn’t feeling well and found them.”

  This time, a sob actually escaped her throat, and she had to stop again.

  Giorgio allowed her to proceed at her own pace. He’d learned a long time ago not to push too hard in situations like this. People processed pain differently.

  “I kicked him out,” she finally said. “Back then, you didn’t talk about things like sex abuse. That was private, family business,” she said, twisting her mouth into a frown. “You just dealt with it yourself. There weren’t organizations like there are today. People just suffered alone.”

  “And then Butch showed up not too long before she disappeared. Is that right?” Giorgio asked quietly, remembering a note in the file.

  She nodded, using the tissue to wipe her nose. “Yes. It was only about a week before the prom. Her bi
rthday was just a few weeks away. He showed up at the house just before she was supposed to go out with Ron. He said he had a present for her. But she didn’t want it. She wouldn’t even talk to him. I told him to get out. We all got into a big argument, shouting at each other. He called her a fucking whore and then stormed out the door.”

  “The file says that your ex-husband’s alibi for the night of the prom was a buddy of his,” Giorgio said. “Where was Butch living at the time?”

  “In Whittier, I think. Like I said, he has family there.”

  “And the buddy corroborated his story?” Swan asked.

  “I suppose. They said that on the night she went missing, they were at his house watching TV or something. I remember he used to like to watch Bonanza,” she said with a shrug.

  “Did you know this buddy of his?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “He was a high school friend of Butch’s, I think.”

  “Mrs. Farmer, is there anything you can tell us about the night your daughter went missing that might be helpful?” Giorgio asked.

  She dropped her hands to her lap, cradling the baggie with her daughter’s necklace inside.

  “No. I drank a lot back then. I’m sure they told you that. What Butch did to Lisa destroyed our family. Then there was my first husband…I felt so guilty for…for all of it. So when I came home from that thankless job, I would hit the sauce pretty hard, especially on nights when Lisa was gone. When she was home,” she said, tears beginning to flow again, “she would take care of me. We’d talk until all hours of the night, dreaming about the day when she’d get married.”

  “So you didn’t see or hear anything suspicious that night?”

  “No,” she said, disintegrating into tears again. “Maybe if I hadn’t been drunk,” she sobbed. “Maybe if I’d been a better mother.”

  “Mrs. Farmer,” Swan interjected. “Take a moment and think. Sometimes people see or hear things that at the time don’t seem that important. Were you aware of your surroundings at all that night?”