“Is this good?” Bobby asked, holding up his third crane.
“You’re getting it.” Rachel gave his lopsided attempt her undivided attention.
Tonight was a big night for Joe and Darren, and she was using the chance to enjoy her stepson for the evening. They were keeping the restaurant open until midnight, when the mayor promised to dance the polka in front of the huge, outdoor, cuckoo clock. It was Sugarcreek’s equivalent of watching the Times Square silver ball dropping on the stroke of midnight.
She loved being part of this small village where they could create their own traditions—even if they were a little non-traditional. Bobby wanted to go over in a bit to be part of the celebration. That would be fine, assuming he was still awake. He’d been having a growth spurt lately, and needing more sleep than usual.
The TV was still on from where Bobby had been watching cartoons earlier. With Joe gone, it helped the house not feel empty. They had been getting a little lax lately about Bobby’s TV watching. It was supposed to be no more than an hour per day, but sometimes they neglected to turn it off.
One thing they were more careful about was not allowing the news to be on when he was in the room. They wanted their son to have as innocent a childhood as possible. Bobby was very smart, picked up on everything, and absorbed other people’s grief too deeply to have a diet of real-life tragedy and adult worry.
She was attempting a particularly complicated origami fold when she was surprised to hear the intro music announcing the 11 o’clock news. Before she could get up, grab the remote and turn the news off, a familiar face filled the screen. It was Tony Maddox.
Instead of turning off the TV, she turned up the volume.
“Tony Maddox, a known leader of the street gang, Ghosts Inc. was shot and killed last night at his home,” the news anchor said. “Police have no leads on who is responsible…”
Quickly, she switched the news off before Bobby could be subjected to more details on the violence. She was grateful that he was so absorbed in his origami creation that he hadn’t seemed to notice.
“You good there for a while, buddy?” she asked. “I need to make a phone call.”
He had discarded the crane, she noticed. Now he was concentrating on making a paper airplane. She didn’t blame him. She liked making paper airplanes too.
She dialed Mabel’s number and was relieved when the old woman answered.
“This is Rachel.” She walked into the kitchen for privacy. “I just saw Tony’s face on the news tonight. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Someone shot him. I heard a gunshot about eight. It sounded like it came from Tony’s place. I went to the window, but I couldn’t see anything. Then someone came running out and they kept running.”
“Could you tell who it was?”
“No. It was dark and they went the other way.”
“Were you the one who called the police?”
Big hesitation. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Like I told you before, it’s not smart to get involved with things that happen in that house.”
“You heard a gunshot and you ignored it?”
“I’m an old woman. I stay out of other people’s business.”
Rachel sighed.
“Did the police come talk to you?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t open the door and they went away.”
“They should have brought baked goods.”
“It would have helped,” Mabel agreed. “What do you think will happen to Lily’s baby now that Tony’s gone?”
“I wish I knew. Does he have any close family members who would be trustworthy enough to care for a newborn?”
“Tony had family,” Mabel said. “But not anyone I can think of who Lily would want her baby left with.”
Chapter 39
The next morning, Rachel called Bill Sherman, her old friend from her Cleveland cop days, and made arrangements for him to meet her at Tony’s house. He promised to allow her access so she could try to discover if there was anything in that house that might give her a clue to Lily’s identity.
As far as Tony’s death went—that was what the homicide detectives were for.
Rachel was on her way to Cleveland when she received a call from Sally, the social worker.
“Did you hear about Tony Maddox’s death?” Sally asked.
“Yes. I’m headed up there right now.”
“Good news,” Sally said. “Tony’s mother, the baby’s grandmother, is willing to take her. She contacted us early this morning and wants her grandchild brought to her as soon as possible.”
A long pause while Rachel thought this through.
“What do you know about her?” Rachel said.
“Not much, except she doesn’t have a criminal record. In my line of work, that alone is something to celebrate.”
“It doesn’t necessarily mean she is someone you’d want in charge of a baby.”
“No, but she must have had Tony when she was a teenager. She’s still in her forties and young enough to be able to care for a child. She has a daughter too.”
“Does she have a job?”
“Doesn’t seem to,” Sally said. “Apparently she got a large settlement from a grocery store for a slip-and-fall suit. Ended up with a permanent back injury.”
“If she has a back injury, can she even lift a child?”
“I don’t know,” Sally said. “I’ll need to check things out a little more before we hand the baby over, of course. I just called to let you know where we were on this case.”
“Thanks,” Rachel said. “Please keep me informed.”
The professional cop in her wanted to rejoice in the fact that there was a relative willing to care for the baby. The unofficial side of her wanted to grab that infant and run. She wasn’t sure how well the woman who had raised a street-gang leader would care for a child, and there was also the comment Mabel had made that Tony’s mother was crazy-rotten.
When she arrived, Bill was waiting behind the crime-scene tape.
“Homicide has been here,” he said. “We’ve dusted for fingerprints, etc. You can look into anything you want.”
“Any luck finding anything?”
“My guess is there will be too many fingerprints to do much good. With all the traffic the neighbors say was going on in that house, I’m thinking it’ll just be a Who’s Who of Ghosts Inc. gang members.”
“So you cleared it for me to go in?”
“Sure,” he said. “But I don’t think you’ll find much. It looks like your girl had her own room, so you might want to start there.”
The house was not the pig’s sty Rachel had seen in so many other houses where drugs were sold. The furnishings were old, but clean and well-polished. What appeared to be Lily’s room off the kitchen was not much more than a closet. Rachel suspected it had, at one time, been a pantry. Inside Lily’s room, there were no photos of family members, or herself. Instead, Lily had cut out dozens of pictures of flowers from magazines and taped them to the walls.
There was not much in the way of furnishings in the little room. A cot-sized bed, a small bureau, a miniscule closet, and one small bookcase. It was stuffed to overflowing with paperbacks. Rachel squatted down to read the titles. She saw that the bookcase was mostly crammed with fictional novels about the Amish. Many had price tags on them of a quarter or a dime. Probably picked up at garage sales or thrift stores.
From the looks of the contents of her bookcase, Lily liked to escape into Amish fiction. Rachel could understand. Those books must have shown her a way of life much different from what she had in this house. Perhaps that was why Lily had been trying to get to Amish country, and why she’d also cut out that article about Joe’s restaurant.
The thing Rachel couldn’t figure out about that newspaper article was why Joe’s restaurant in particular? Where was the connection? There were plenty of restaurants in Amish country, many of them Amish run. Again, why Joe?
The article had m
entioned that Joe’s wife was a cop. Had Lily thought Rachel would help protect her and the baby? If that was the case, Rachel wished she had been able to have gotten to her without wrecking. Lily wouldn’t be the first pregnant girl she had helped.
“From what I’ve seen,” Bill said, “your girl was part Tony’s girlfriend, part unpaid housekeeper.”
“And his cook,” Rachel said. “Tony told me that was why she got to live here when his other girlfriends were not allowed. He said it was because she cooked ‘real’ food.”
“Girl must’ve loved flowers.”
“Looks like it.”
“Seems like there should be something more personal in this room than just her paperbacks, furniture, and pictures on the wall.”
“Especially at her age,” Rachel said. “And did you notice that there aren’t any baby things? Most mothers are buying little outfits long before they are full-term.”
“She didn’t have many clothes of her own,” Bill said, drawing back a curtain, revealing the tiny closet where a handful of tops and bottoms hung.
“If she liked to read, maybe she liked to write. Did anyone find a journal or diary?”
“Nope,” Bill said. “But I’ll help you look.”
Five minutes later, they’d been through all the bits and pieces of jewelry, clothing and underwear in the bureau drawers. All items were folded neatly. They turned the mattress over and looked beneath for anything that might have been hidden. They looked behind the headboard and in a small footlocker that held two pairs of shoes and a worn pair of boots.
The room was so small, it was hard for two people to move around without bumping into one another. It did not take long to search every inch. It was almost as though the girl had not wanted to leave anything behind that could identify her. No family photos, no keepsakes. It was disappointing. Rachel’s hopes had been high that she would find some clue here. Now, she saw that she would not.
“It’s as though she was trying to erase her whole identity,” she told Bill.
“Or didn’t have one to begin with.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes people can become so bowed down by circumstances or mental abuse that they almost cease to exist even to themselves. You told me that Tony said he’d found her on the street. That means she was running away from something or someone. More than likely, someone. Tony took her in and she traded her ability to cook and more intimate favors for a roof over her head and food to eat. Tony’s was a powerful personality. He kept his followers frightened, loyal, and in awe of him, and some of them are bad dudes. I can see why someone like Lily didn’t have a chance.”
“Do you suppose Lily was her real name?” Rachel asked.
“What do you mean?”
“All these pictures of flowers she pasted to the wall. Maybe she just chose to call herself by one of them.”
“There’s a good chance we’ll never know,” Bill said. “You might have to give this one up, Rachel.”
“That would be easy to do, but I keep thinking of her little girl. When she grows up, she’ll want to know who her mother was. She’ll want to know whether or not she had grandparents, cousins.”
“I suppose, but I dunno if that’s always a good thing.” He scratched his head. “I get the feeling that God has a wicked sense of humor every time my family gets together at holidays at my grandma’s. Craziest bunch I ever saw.”
“And yet you love them,” Rachel said
“Yeah,” Bill conceded. “I do. Want to check out the kitchen? Lily must have spent a lot of time in there.”
“Sure,” Rachel said. “Might as well.”
The kitchen did not reveal anything except that Lily had all the basics she needed to make decent meals. She might have been a good cook in Tony’s eyes, but there was nothing gourmet or out-of-the ordinary in the supplies or equipment. Apparently, to Tony, any woman who could make mashed potatoes from real potatoes was a rarity and a gem.
“Since she could cook, maybe she thought she could get a job at your husband’s restaurant.”
“You could be right, but why leave here on Christmas Eve? If she was looking for a job, she couldn’t come at a worse time. Joe’s Home Plate would have been closed.”
“Maybe she didn’t think she had a choice,” Bill said.
“Maybe she didn’t. Any idea of who Tony’s killer was?”
“Not yet.”
Rachel heard a commotion in the front yard. Someone was out there yelling and swearing.
“I got a right to go in,” a coarse voice screamed. “It was my son’s house and now it’s mine!”
“Not yet, ma’am,” one of the two cops who had been guarding the place tried to calm the woman down. “The police have not yet finished their investigations.”
“They don’t have to investigate. I know who killed my son. I can tell them who it is too.”
Rachel glanced out the door. The woman looked like she could be in her forties, but she must have lived a hard life. She was the kind of skinny Rachel associated with heroin or meth use. She had frizzy, unkempt hair that was dyed an unflattering shade of red. Tight black leggings and a t-shirt sporting a picture of a marijuana plant completed her ensemble.
Not exactly the kind of nurturing grandmother Rachel had been hoping to find.
“Is that Tony’s mother?”
“Afraid so. Gertie Maddox. She’s been making our lives miserable ever since she got word that Tony got killed last night. Funny thing though, from what I hear, it seems like she’s not nearly as upset at his death as she is furious that we’ve not allowed her to go inside the house. Absolutely determined to get in here. I get the feeling there’s something in here she wants, bad.”
“Or something she thinks might be in there,” Rachel said. “Have they found any money? Drugs?”
“Plenty, but it’s with the Vice Unit right now. We haven’t told her that yet though.”
“Is there any chance that she does know who shot him?”
“Probably not. So far she’s named about a dozen people she wants us to investigate. We are taking her accusations seriously, but some of them are pretty random. She even accused an old neighbor lady; a woman in her eighties who has to use a walker to get around.”
“Mabel?”
“I think that’s the name.”
“I know her. I’m planning to go over there and talk with her when I finish here. It was her car that Lily stole.”
“That’s interesting. Let me know if you find out anything valuable.”
“Of course. I think I’ll go out the back door and see if I can avoid Gertie for now.”
“Wish I could avoid her,” Bill said.
Chapter 40
“No pie?” Mabel said, when she opened the door to Rachel. “No cookies? I’m disappointed in you.”
“My aunt is a little under the weather.” Rachel held out a box of Krispie Kreme doughnuts. “Will these do? I picked them up on the way here.”
Mabel unlatched the storm door.
“No walker today?” Rachel asked, handing Mabel the box.
“My hip is feeling some better. Thought I’d give my cane a try.” Mabel glanced out at the commotion in the yard next door. “Gertie at it again?’
“She wants to get inside the house. The police aren’t letting her.”
“She wants to get at Tony’s money.”
“There isn’t any left. The cops found it all; the drugs too.”
“Doubt it. Tony had special-made places to hide his drugs and money. Gertie knows that. Lily told me Gertie was one of the main people he was hiding things from. He didn’t trust her, and Lily said he had good reason. Last year Gertie got hold of his credit card and bought herself a giant flat-screen television set with it.”
“Tony had a credit card?” Rachel asked.
“Not after that.”
“Gertie told the cops you might have been the one who shot him.”
Mabel was startled. “Me?”
; “You, and about a dozen other people she suggested. Do you have a gun?”
“Of course, but I had no call to kill Tony. He looked after me… in his own way. That’s why me and Lily got to know each other in the beginning. He sent her over here to check on me.”
“Did you give her the keys to your car that night?”
“No, but she knew where the keys were. I’d told her, if things ever got really bad with Tony, she was welcome to use it. I promised I wouldn’t call the police on her.”
“Did she ever give you any indication where she was from?” Rachel asked.
“No. Funny thing. She’d chat with me all day about those paperbacks she read. She’d tell me the whole plot of one while she washed dishes or made me some soup or something. I don’t read so good anymore, so I liked that a lot, but she never told me anything personal from before we met. I asked her one time where she’d learned to cook so good and she said her grandmother had taught her. That’s the most she ever said about her past.”
“If Tony didn’t let her go out much, where did she get the books?”
“There’s a thrift store up the street he allowed her to walk to. She could buy a paperback for pocket change. There were always a lot of people coming and going at Tony’s house. She said she almost always found a quarter or two in the couch after some of them left. She could buy a paperback for fifty cents. She was always wanting to be reading them Amish stories.”
“Did she ever tell you why she liked Amish novels so much?” Rachel said.
“I asked her once. She said she didn’t know, except she felt safe when she was reading them.”
“Safe?”
“That’s what she said. Didn’t make any sense to me, but I was glad it helped her.”
Mabel began to eye the bakery box again.
Love Rekindled Page 18