The Christening Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  “How could it identify him if it was sealed in a grave?”

  “Suppose it became unsealed,” I said. “Suppose the state came in and said the church was in danger of collapsing and should be bulldozed the way all the other buildings in Studsburg were.”

  “But they didn’t,” Joseph said. “They said exactly the opposite. They declared the church structurally safe. That’s why your friend’s baby was baptized there.”

  “True.”

  “No, I think there’s a possibility you haven’t considered, and Studsburg being the kind of town it was, you have to consider it. This was a town protecting its own and guarding some kind of secret. If it’s a money secret and J.J. Eberling was involved, Candy may have found out about it, and it may have cost her her life. But then why did J.J. Eberling publish a paper that gave the secret of her death away? If anyone knew what was in that paper, he did. So perhaps it was love, and the town closed ranks to protect her lover because he was respected.”

  “It was more than respect, Joseph. They were beholden to both J.J. and the mayor. Everyone seemed to be the beneficiary of their kindness.”

  “That makes sense,” Joseph said. “It stretches credulity to believe that even half the population of that town, say two hundred people, could keep silent about a murder for thirty years. Someone would have broken his silence; someone’s conscience would have gotten the better of him. I think the town didn’t know there’d been a murder till you discovered it. They knew something else, and the something else is what they’ve been trying to keep you from learning. In fact”—she looked away from the table—“there may have been more than one secret. From what you’ve told me about them, I would almost guess that J.J. Eberling and the mayor didn’t especially like each other. There may have been a quiet battle for power between them, each of them seeing himself as the leader of that little village. But in the end, they needed each other just the way the whole town needed them.”

  “A kind of mutual blackmail,” I said.

  “It’s possible, isn’t it? It reminds me of the search for the cause of a deadly disease. Sometimes there are many causes. And sometimes,” she said thoughtfully, “what looks like one disease is really many diseases.”

  “But Candy Phillips’s killer is still alive, whichever disease she was part of.”

  “Perhaps,” Joseph said, “and perhaps not. You see, the person who opened that grave in the church may not have been a killer revisiting the scene of his crime. It could have been someone who had heard about the murder, and he—or she—wanted to know the truth. Perhaps he leaned over the remains and his chain caught on the stone and broke. How clean was the floor that night?”

  It struck me as she asked the question that I should have seen it myself. The basement was three-quarters below ground level and the floor had been slick and silty, not like the upstairs floor, which had been carefully cleaned for the baptism. I had even noticed when I returned a week later that it was cleaner than when I first saw it, ostensibly because the police had been looking for leads.

  “It was dirty,” I said. “I couldn’t have heard the medal fall, because it wouldn’t have made a sound on the floor. You’re right. He bent down and the medal hit the rock or the chain caught and broke, and the medal bounced on the stone before it hit the floor. And you know, it should have been much dirtier, Joseph, if it spent thirty years in dirty water. The skeleton was covered with mud.”

  “I think the suggestion of a payoff was a sound one. I don’t know if it will lead you to a killer, but it should answer a lot of questions.”

  “Thank you, Joseph.”

  She pushed the map across the table to me, and I picked up the medal, rubbed it between my fingers, and put it back in my purse.

  As I got up from the table, she said, “Take the map, too. I think you need it more than I.”

  24

  The first thing I did when I got home was to call the Degenkamps. The younger Mrs. Degenkamp answered.

  “I’m afraid the news is bad,” she said. “My father-in-law was found lying on the ground in a wooded area about a mile from here. He was unconscious and he died before they could get him to a hospital.”

  I must have made a sound. I know that I felt a wave of shock and a total inability to speak.

  “It was very shocking to us, too,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to upset him yesterday.”

  “He got a phone call,” I said. “From Fred Larkin.”

  “Whatever it was, he picked up and left a little while later, and they didn’t find him for hours.”

  “Do they know what he died of?”

  “They think a heart attack or exposure or perhaps a combination of both. Because of the circumstances, there has to be an autopsy. We should know more tomorrow.”

  “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Degenkamp. I hope you’ll convey my sympathy to your mother-in-law.”

  “I’ll have to wait till she’s more composed. This has hit her like a ton of bricks.”

  “Have you scheduled the funeral?”

  “Friday, if they release the body in time.”

  I said a few more inadequate words and hung up. Old Henry Degenkamp had seen something or knew something. Now it was lost along with his life. What had Fred Larkin said to him? It had to be more than the possibility of my arrival. I had already spoken to the Degenkamps last week, and they had effectively put me off. Had Larkin threatened him?

  I boiled water and made a cup of tea. I’m not much of a cook, but I brew tea with care. Even inhaling its fumes on a cold day makes me feel good. With the cup beside me, I called Jack at the Sixty-fifth Precinct in Brooklyn. He was actually there.

  “Hey, good to hear from you. How’s things?”

  I told him about Henry Degenkamp.

  “Chris, honey, get in your car and drive down to Brooklyn. It’s crazy for you to be alone, and I’ve got things to tell you. We’ll have dinner after my class. I’ll cook, I’ll listen, and I’ll keep you warm and happy all night.”

  “You’re a sweetheart,” I said.

  “I know. My sister told me last time I talked to her. How about it?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I don’t consider myself an expert in man-woman relationships, contemporary or otherwise. But if I were to offer one piece of advice to a woman in search of the man she would like to love, it would be to find one who enjoys cooking. I know I place myself hopelessly outside the mainstream when I say I find cooking a chore, but I got along for thirty years without having to feed myself—with the exception of one year of graduate study when I had my own tiny apartment—and my current efforts are geared toward keeping me alive, not toward achieving taste sensations.

  Jack, on the other hand, has lived by himself for several years, and he enjoys food the way some people enjoy music and art. What’s more, his sister is part owner of a fledgling catering service, so he is frequentìy the beneficiary of enticing samples and leftovers, the tastes of which inspire him to greater culinary activities, and me to shrink from the work and talent I’m sure are involved in preparing such attractive and wonderful foods.

  On that evening he had a foil container of a fabulous chicken concoction made with unpronounceable mushrooms. He cooked rice and whipped up a salad while I cut grapefruit for us to start with.

  “We’re a good team,” he said, looking in the oven, where the chicken was warming, to check I could not imagine what.

  “You cook the food and I cut the grapefruit. If that’s all it takes to play on your team, I’ll sign up for the season.”

  “And I’ll have you out of the grapefruit league in no time. I’m leaving you the dishes, pots, and pans. Is that even enough?”

  “Does that mean I get to throw away the foil container?”

  “You get to do that, too. Right.”

  He has the sweetest smile I’ve ever seen on a man. When it comes my way, I have trouble remembering how tough and determined he can look when he finds himself in a danger zone.
r />   The first taste of that chicken put me in rapture. “It’s better than good,” I said. “Tell your sister the Sacred Heart Convent never ate like this.”

  “How could they afford it? Those mushrooms are ten bucks a pound.”

  “Maybe when this is over I’ll bring the nuns a dinner’s worth.”

  “My sister’ll donate it. How’s that?”

  “I’ll do the donating. Jack, tell me about Joanne Beadles.”

  “I found her.”

  “You did?”

  “You didn’t think I lured you here under false pretenses?”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful. Tell me about it.”

  “Eat first. Talk afterward.”

  Over coffee and a luscious chocolate cake, he told me. He had started by going to the building where Joanne Beadles had first lived when she came to New York thirty years ago. It was an old building in the West Forties, happily not one of many that had been torn down for a new high-rise. The super was in his sixties and had been running the building since shortly before Joanne moved in. He remembered her because she was young and most of his tenants were older, because she paid the first month’s rent and the security in cash from what looked like a thick roll of bills, and because there was a strange incident several months after she moved in. Someone had beaten her up, and she asked the super to get her an ambulance.

  “Do you think she was a prostitute?” I asked.

  “The guy doesn’t think so. He never saw men come and go, and nothing like that ever happened again.”

  “Did she identify the man?”

  “Doesn’t look that way. There’s no record of the case. I checked the precinct files. The files for that year are already on microfiche, so I didn’t have to spend half a year looking through paper records.”

  According to the super’s books, Joanne had stayed in the apartment for about three years. He had had the feeling that she was an actress, but he didn’t know what made him think that. In any case, she moved out one day, having given proper notice, and he never saw her again.

  Jack has a unique way of taking notes which is peculiarly his own. He starts with a clean sheet of white, unlined paper, which he folds in half horizontally. He then starts writing on it, sometimes along a short edge, sometimes hit or miss. At some point he decides the subject matter warrants a clean surface and he folds the paper in half again, clean side out, and resumes writing. His notes end up looking haphazard if you flatten out the sheet, which of course, he never does. His system of information retrieval is strictly intuitive. He folds and unfolds, turns and turns again. But he always seems to come up with what he’s looking for. As he related his search, he referred to one of his wonderful note sheets, and I marveled for the hundredth time at his system.

  When Joanne left the apartment, she left no forwarding address, at least not with the super. So Jack went to the main post office on Eighth Avenue across from Madison Square Garden. I was somewhat amused at the parallel courses our investigations had taken. In my search for Candy Phillips’s whereabouts I had visited her home and subsequently gone to the post office, albeit a much smaller one. In Jack’s case he had eventually found what he was looking for with the help of the Postal Inspector’s office. It’s amazing how many old records can be found if you know where to look. Joanne Beadles had moved up to the West Eighties and changed her name at the same time. She had married Lawrence Knox.

  “And believe it or not, she’s still there.”

  “She only moved once in thirty years?”

  “In New York, you get a good apartment, it doesn’t, pay to give it up. You end up paying more for less. Nowadays who gets the apartment is part of the divorce settlement.”

  “This is just great, Jack.”

  “And if you look in the phone book, the greatest source of names, addresses, and phone numbers ever compiled, you’ll find Lawrence Knox right there.”

  “I can’t believe it. I thought she would have gone to California or something and I’d never find her.”

  “Hey, we love to hate it, but New York’s a great place to live.” We had finished our cake and coffee by then, and he had his arm around me. I let my head slide down to his shoulder and put my arms around him.

  He said, “Mm,” and kissed the side of my face.

  “I have dishes to do,” I said.

  “It’s my house, I do the dishes.”

  “I thought we were a team.”

  “You really go by the book, don’t you?”

  I said, “Mm,” and kissed his neck.

  “Tell you what. We’ll do them together and then we’ll do something else together.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  It was.

  25

  One thing I don’t do is call before I come. In this case especially, I didn’t know what Joanne née Beadles would be willing to talk about and what might put her off so strongly that she might refuse to speak to me at all. Jack was on his usual ten-to-six schedule, so we got up about eight and had breakfast together.

  “You look better already,” he said at the breakfast table. “Two good meals and you’re back on track.”

  “Maybe it was just the change of scene. And looking at you.”

  “That, too. You going to check out Ms. Beadles Knox this morning?”

  “First thing.”

  “Why don’t I call and offer her a carpet-cleaning service to see if she’s home.”

  “That would be good, Jack.”

  He opened his Manhattan phone book and dialed the number. After a generous wait, he hung up. “Sorry. The lady must work or walk the dog.”

  “I’ll drop in on Arnold then. He probably has work I can do.”

  “I’ll drive you to the station.”

  Jack’s apartment is in Brooklyn Heights, which is just across the river from downtown Manhattan, where Arnold Gold’s office is. The trip didn’t take long, and I enjoyed the walk on the Manhattan side. Arnold’s law office is in an old building with an elevator that has seen better days. When I walked into the reception area, I got a warm welcome. Yes, there was work, and no, Arnold hadn’t gotten a temp for today. I took my coat off and got to work.

  Arnold was off in court during the morning, but he returned after eleven, happy to see me. “So how about I take you to lunch, Chrissie?”

  “Everybody’s feeding me lately,” I said. “Do I really look that bad?”

  “You look terrific. I just don’t feel like sharing my table with a member of the noble profession today. So if we get a table for two, my honorable colleagues will have to look elsewhere for scintillating conversation, of which, as you know, I am frequently a source. Also it’s nice to be seen occasionally with a good-looking woman who isn’t my wife.”

  “I accept.”

  Arnold’s lunches are not anything that Hollywood or Wall Street would covet. But they’re better than a sandwich and coffee at my desk, and the conversation is never disappointing.

  “Well, you’ve been at it a couple of weeks now. Got a murderer yet?” he said when he had ordered.

  “A lot of facts, a few conclusions, some suspects, but nothing I can pin on anyone. Opportunity but no real motive.”

  “I think you’re damned good to learn anything after so long.”

  “In this case I had to find out who the victim was first. And although I haven’t proved it conclusively yet with a dental X ray, I know who she was.”

  “OK. I’m waiting.”

  I told him about Candy, all the smiles caught by the Thurstons’ camera, how she had come as a dreaded tenant and left as a member of the family. I told him how I could feel the exuberance of her spirit, her dedication as a teacher, her kindness as a friend, how the stories about her had made her live again for me.

  I embellished my tale with the reminiscences of Mrs. Thurston and her daughter, Monica, and the warm recollections of Amy Broderick and her brother, Jerry Mulholland. “ ‘The delectable Miss Phillips,’ he said,” and I found my eyes misting.

&
nbsp; “I see as usual you’re taking this very personally.”

  “I started out wanting to give her a name so she could get a decent burial. But it’s become more than that for me, Arnold. And it’s not just that there were people, nice people, who loved her. Not just that there was some kind of hanky-panky going on in that town that everyone I’ve talked to would be happy to rebury. Not just that there are people who, for their own selfish reasons, have chosen to see her as unworthy.”

  Arnold’s eyes pierced mine as they always do when he’s interested or concerned. “Then what is it?” he asked in a low voice.

  “Candy was twenty-four years old when she died. Thirty years ago, when I was born, my mother was twenty-four. If they were alive today, they might have twenty-five or thirty-five years of life ahead of them. My mother’s life was cut short by a disease for which there was no cure, and hard as that was for me, I came to accept it. But Candy’s life was ended by someone who hated or feared her, and while there’s no cure for that either, I want him exposed. Disease is fairly arbitrary. My mother had the bad luck to be stricken. But Candy was singled out for death. She died because of malice, and malice is hateful. I don’t care if he’s tried for his crime, but I want people to know he did it. I want people to know he isn’t the wonderful person they think he is.”

  “Sounds like you know who did it.”

  “Well, of course I have my suspicions. But I can’t for the life of me think why he would have done it. She was leaving the area. She already had a teaching job in another state. If they’d been having an affair, it was over.”

  “Maybe she was pregnant.”

  “She wasn’t.” I didn’t explain, but he seemed to accept the forcefulness of my decree.

  “Maybe he didn’t do it.”

  I’m sure I heard myself sigh. “Then who did?” I asked, not rhetorically as it may have sounded but as a real question that cried for an answer.

  “You’ve gone this far, you’ll go all the way. Just eat hearty. You need to keep your strength up.”

  A few minutes after I got back to the office, Jack called. “She’s there,” he said. “I did my carpet-cleaning routine and got hung up on.”