Faye Kellerman_Decker & Lazarus 06

by Grievous Sin

  “Will do.” Marge put her sunglasses back on her nose, then took a tissue and spread it over her right palm. “Let me see that key.”

  Decker dropped it in the pink Kleenex.

  Marge said, “Wrong shape for a safe-deposit box.”

  “Yep.”

  “Post office or mailbox?”

  “Could be. Looks more like a strongbox key to me.”

  “Me, too,” Marge said. “I’m just thinking that whoever rewound the messages might have taken the box.”

  “Thought crossed my mind.” Decker bagged the key. “I’ll give the place another going-over.”

  “Call when you’re done. We’ll compare notes.” Marge winked at Cindy. “Look after him, kid.”

  Decker waited for Marge to leave, then said, “Did Rina leave the hospital all right?”

  Cindy nodded. “Her parents picked her up right on time. She’s very proud of what you’re doing, Dad. She’s worried about Caitlin, too.”

  “Caitlin?”

  “The baby’s name. Lourdes told me.”

  Caitlin, Decker thought. So the little thing has an official name. “Cindy, the only reason I’m not chopping your head off is because I’m indebted to you—”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Yes, I am, and so is Rina. We both have you to thank for Hannah’s safety. But…as your father…I’m furious at you.”

  “It’s only because I care! Dad, I’ve got eyes. Let me help you look for this box. I won’t get in your way after this. I promise.”

  Decker hesitated. It was unprofessional, but at the moment another pair of peepers just might do the trick. Hell with regulations. Look how regulations had helped Caitlin Rodriguez last night.

  “All right,” Decker said. “Start with the kitchen. Be slow and methodical. I’ve already gone over everything twice…but maybe I missed something.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “S’right.” Decker felt a sudden burst of warmth in his heart. “I love you, princess.”

  Cindy smiled. “I love you, too.”

  16

  Sitting in the hospital cafeteria, Marge pondered why all institutional coffee tasted like swill. Lips puckering as she sipped, she noticed that Paula Delfern wasn’t making much headway with her java, either. The nurse was gazing into the white ceramic cup as if reading tea leaves, fingers gripped around the mug. She appeared to be in her midtwenties with a creamy complexion and tawny-colored hair cut to the shoulders. Her dark eyes were set into a moon-shaped face. Her features were small but broad—a wide nose, a wide smile. With makeup, she could be pretty. Scrubbed-faced as she was now, she looked the part of a healthy farm girl. Marge took out her notebook.

  Paula said, “I really don’t know how I can help. I mean, Marie and I are friends. But thinking about that, I really don’t know much about her. When we used to talk a lot, I was the one having the problems. We talked about me.”

  “What kind of problems?” Marge asked.

  “Is that relevant?”

  Marge leaned in. “You never know what’s going to help us find her or the baby.”

  Paula shuddered at the word baby. “Gosh, that’s just terrible!”

  “How’d you meet Marie?”

  “She trained me at Sun Valley Pres. I was an OB/neonate nurse for a year before I switched to Peds. Like I told your partner, I love the kids. And so did Marie. I couldn’t imagine Marie ever hurting a kid. She just couldn’t!”

  “Who said she’s hurting a kid?”

  “Well, she wouldn’t do that to a mother. I know Marie, and she likes the new moms, too.”

  “How did you and Marie become good friends?” Marge said. “From what I hear, Marie isn’t sociable.”

  “No, she’s not sociable, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t nice. Parties just aren’t her thing. What we used to do is just sit and talk after shift, you know? She’d make a cup of coffee….” Paula appeared lost in thought. “We’d just talk. I was going through a lot of problems with my ex-boyfriend…commitment problems. So what else is new, right?”

  Marge nodded understandingly, although commitment was the last thing she wanted out of life. Pete seemed happy remarried. But Pete seemed happy before. “So you and Marie talked about your boyfriend?”

  “Yes. Marie was very helpful. Not that we didn’t disagree about things. We had some pretty intense discussions about God.”

  “God?”

  “Yeah, Marie was into Jesus. She especially liked the parable about the prodigal son.”

  “The sinner repenting.”

  “Yep. She used to say everyone has skeletons in their closet.”

  “Marie mention hers?”

  “Not really. Marie really didn’t talk much about her personal life. Too busy talking about my problems.” Paula’s focus fell back to the mug. “Marie could be understanding even if…” She wiped her eyes with her napkin. “Excuse me, this is hard.”

  “Take your time.”

  “I got pregnant by my ex-boyfriend….” She sniffed, and her voice became small. “He wasn’t my ex back then. That’s when the commitment issue really came out, you know?”

  Marge nodded.

  “He didn’t want marriage.” She sniffed again. “He didn’t want a baby. He said he was too young, although he was in his last year of medical school. He could have…anyway, when I told him I was going to keep the baby, he had a fit. He told me don’t expect help from him…he was just too young to be tied down. Then two months later…he…he got engaged to a classmate.” She started to cry. “It’s not that he didn’t want commitment, he just didn’t want me.”

  She buried her face in her napkin. Marge waited for the weeping to stop, wondering if Paula’s story was relevant. Finally, the nurse dried her eyes.

  “Marie was very helpful.”

  “A shoulder to cry on?”

  “Yes, and more. She became close to me. She even invited me to stay with her, saying I’d need help when I got bigger—farther along in my pregnancy. I’m from Des Moines, and I don’t really get along well with my folks. To show up back home pregnant and unmarried…I’d never hear the end of it. I felt so alone. Marie was just great! No one could have been as kind as she was to me. She was one of the few people I know who practiced what they preached.”

  “Did you move in with her?”

  She shook her head. “It turned out it wasn’t necessary. I miscarried at four months.” She smiled through wet eyes. “My ex-boyfriend sent me flowers in the hospital. Can you imagine?”

  “Nice guy.”

  “A very expensive lesson in life, I suppose.” She sighed. “At least I felt better losing the baby from miscarriage than from abortion. Truthfully, I was going to get an abortion. But Marie talked me out of it.”

  “Marie was against your abortion or any abortion?”

  “It wasn’t black and white, Detective. But she did have feelings about the subject. She asked me if I could live with my decision—terminating my own child’s life. It made me evaluate who I was.”

  “Did Marie belong to a specific religion?”

  “She just considered herself a decent Christian woman. But that wasn’t the reason for her views. I think she had lost a baby a long time ago…when she was very young. I don’t know whether it was a stillborn or the baby died at birth. Whatever it was, it was a tragedy. She said it changed her life.”

  Marge was scribbling furiously. “How so?”

  “I don’t know. She never got any more specific.”

  “How old was she when she lost her baby?”

  “She just said she was very young.”

  It was Marge’s turn to hesitate. Very young. Marie’s chart claimed she’d had a D and C a couple of years back. Had Marie had another miscarriage or stillborn? No, it couldn’t be a stillborn. Someone would have recalled Marie pregnant. So maybe it was a miscarriage. Maybe this was the tragedy that Marie was referring to. She could have told Paula it had been many years ago when in fact it hadn’t been. And
she might have embellished the severity of it to make Paula feel better.

  “Do you know if Marie was married at the time of her tragedy?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. Marie didn’t get into specifics, and back then, her problems weren’t utmost on my mind.”

  “But she told you she had actually lost a baby.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not just miscarried.”

  “She used the term lost.”

  “Paula, did Marie seem unusually preoccupied with babies lately?”

  “I can’t answer that honestly. Because lately, I haven’t seen much of Marie.” Paula sighed again. “I found another boyfriend. A good guy, also with commitment problems.” She laughed nervously. “But at least he’s up front about it. We’ve been going together almost four months. Now that things are going okay for me, Marie’s sort of dropped out of the picture. I call and invite her out. But as soon as she finds out Joe’s gonna be there, she backs off. Joe’s a fun-loving guy, and Marie is…”

  “She doesn’t approve of Joe?”

  “No, it’s not like that. Marie isn’t judgmental. She just does better one-on-one. This was the first time I’d seen her in months. I was planning to take her out to dinner for her birthday. Just the two of us. Now I find out…this is so horrible. I feel guilty. Maybe she was sending me signals I didn’t pick up on.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” Paula said. “Like I said, I obviously didn’t pick up on them.”

  “When was the last time you talked to Marie?”

  “A week ago. When we made plans.”

  “And how’d she sound?”

  “Fine.”

  “Did she say anything unusual to you regarding babies or mothers?”

  “No.”

  “Did she mention her prior tragedy at all?”

  “No.”

  “Did she mention your miscarriage at all?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know of any men past or present in Marie’s life?”

  “No.”

  “But she told you she lost a baby.”

  “Yes.”

  “She never said when this happened?”

  “Just that she was young.”

  “And she never mentioned the father?”

  “No.”

  “Did she ever talk about having another baby, Paula?”

  “No. And she only talked about her tragedy after I lost the baby. To be empathetic, I think.”

  “Paula, when you were close to Marie, did you know or meet any of Marie’s other friends?”

  “I don’t think Marie had very many friends.”

  “Well, when you used to visit her, did she ever get any phone calls?”

  “From the hospital.”

  “How about personal phone calls?”

  “No…wait, her mom called several times. Marie told me her mom lives in a nursing home in Arcadia. She’s kind of nuts, and every so often she escapes and calls Marie on a pay phone. Marie used to visit her twice a week. I’m sure she still does.”

  Marge paused and looked through her notes. There it was. Pete had played Marie’s messages for her. In them had been a gravelly voice on the run. She looked up from her notebook. “Do you know the name of the nursing home?”

  “No, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I’m terrible with names.”

  “But it’s in Arcadia.”

  “It was as of six, maybe seven, months ago.”

  “The only calls you ever heard Marie receive were from her mom?”

  “She’s the only one I remember calling Marie’s house.”

  “Did you ever hear her talk about Dotty?”

  “Dotty?”

  “Yesterday someone named Dotty called her house.”

  “Dotty…could you mean Dody?”

  “Could be. Who’s Dody?”

  “Secretary from Sun Valley Pres’s pension-plan department. Business. Every so often she used to call me to verify wages and deductions and stuff like that. She’s a fixture at Sun Valley.”

  “Was she a friend of Marie’s?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “So you don’t know anyone Marie might be friendly with outside the hospital other than her mom?”

  “She’s nice to the incoming nurses. Really sweet. Maybe she had another special friend. Someone she took under her wing. Like me. I really don’t know.”

  “Anybody specific you have in mind?”

  “No. No one.”

  “Did Marie ever offer to take care of your baby after it arrived?”

  Paula scrunched up her eyes in concentration. “Well, she did say I could stay with her. Like I said, she was nice. But she didn’t get any more specific than that.”

  “Did you ever have the feeling that she wanted to raise your baby as her own?”

  “No, Detective. She just really wanted to help me. Helping people. That was Marie’s thing. She cared.”

  “You’re describing her as such a giving person. Yet you can’t remember any other friends she had.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but I can’t.”

  “Never got a picture postcard from someone on vacation?”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Paula’s eyes lit up. “She received a Christmas card. She stood it up on her coffee table, half-open. I noticed it because it was the only Christmas card she had on display. She said it was from an old friend but never said more than that. Gosh, amazing what suddenly hits you. When you said postcard, I remembered Christmas card.”

  “Do you know who sent the card?”

  “You mean the name? Gosh, I’m just terrible at names.”

  “Was it a man or a woman?”

  “A woman. I just can’t remember….”

  “Think, Paula. Think!”

  “It wasn’t a weird name.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. It was a while ago.”

  “The card was signed with a first and last name?”

  “Yes, it was…I think.”

  “And no names come to mind.”

  “No. Just that it wasn’t an unusual name.”

  “Thanks for your time.” Marge folded her notebook, wondering if Decker’d come across any Christmas cards. “If you think of that name or anything else—”

  “I’ll call. Do you have a card?”

  Marge handed her a business card. “You can ring me or my partner, Detective Sergeant Peter Decker. I wrote his name next to mine. You can ask for either one.”

  “Good thing you wrote it down.” Paula pocketed the card. “Like I told you, I’m terrible with names.”

  “We should all be named John Doe, huh?”

  “It would help. Or at least Bob—”

  Paula stopped talking. Marge asked, “What is it?”

  “The last name was Robert…. It was Susan Robert…something like that.”

  “Susan Robert?”

  “Something like that, but not exactly.”

  “Okay, that’s a real good start.”

  “But it wasn’t Susan. More like Susanna, but that wasn’t it either.”

  “Cynthia?” Marge suggested. “Sara?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Cecilia? Sandra? Serita?”

  “Sondra,” Paula stated. “The name on the card was Sondra Robert.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pretty sure, I think.” Paula beamed. “Guess I’m not so terrible with names after all.” She paused. “It’s Detective Dunn, right?”

  Marge stood and smiled. “Right.”

  Decker studied the face of the Christmas card—a snow-covered pastoral scene with smoke rising from the country house’s chimney. Inside were the words: Over the River and through the Woods. A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. The signature was large and full of flare. Sondra Roberts. No love or sincerely or best wishes or fondly. Just a signature. To Marge, he said, “And Paula said this was the only Christmas card Bellson had on display?”

  “The only one she remembered seeing.” Marge sat d
own on Marie’s wave-patterned couch. “Where’d you finally find it?”

  “In her stationery drawer under her personalized paper—the only personal item I found.”

  “We never did find any lockbox,” Cindy added. “Or wall safe or floor safe or hidden door.”

  “She must have some photo albums somewhere,” Marge said. “Everyone has photo albums.”

  “Unless you’re trying to forget your past,” Decker mentioned.

  “The prodigal daughter,” Marge said. “Then why keep the old books?”

  “Maybe Marie didn’t want to bury her past entirely. Books are less threatening reminders than snapshots.”

  Marge raised her brow. “Or maybe the someone who rewound her messages could have taken her personal photographs. Come to think of it, he or she could have taken the lockbox, too. All personal effects that might have linked the person with Marie.”

  Cindy said, “Then why wouldn’t the person take the key to the box?”

  Decker stared at his daughter.

  Cindy shrugged. “Sorry, I’m just a little bored…don’t mind me.”

  Decker zeroed in on her. “All right, Cynthia. If the person was going to take the lockbox, why wouldn’t he or she take the key?”

  “Because the person knew where the box was but didn’t know where the key was.”

  “The girl’s a natural,” Marge said.

  “That’s my daughter,” Decker said. “So we’re working on the assumption that this key fits a box, and the box was taken, but not by Marie. Otherwise, she would have taken the key.” Decker thought a moment. “To know about the existence of such a box…it would have been someone close to Marie.”

  “I’ll call Paula and ask her if she knew about a box,” Marge suggested.

  “Good.” Decker turned to his daughter. “Thanks for the help, princess. Now will you go home and get some sleep?”

  “Yes, I will go home and I will take a nap. I’m very tired.”

  “Hallelujah,” Decker said. “Exhaustion has finally prevailed.”

  “What first, Rabbi?” Marge asked. “Start scanning the phone books for Sondra Roberts?”