The Christening Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  “You deserved it.”

  “I don’t know why,” he said with mock innocence. “I started out the way they all do: ‘Hi, Mrs. Knox. How’re you doing today?’ ”

  “On my telephone, anyone who asks how I’m doing today is selling something.”

  “Well, maybe you’ve got a smoother approach than mine.”

  “I’ll give it a try.”

  26

  The subway took me uptown. I knew the area from recent visits to an old apartment house where a friend died. Joanne Beadles Knox lived in a prewar building between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. Like all the buildings of its vintage, it presented a monolithic facade flush with the sidewalk. I wonder sometimes why builders and planners totally excluded trees and greenery from their image of the city. One of the most refreshing things about going home is the smell of the air in Oakwood.

  Once inside the outer lobby, I found her name on the panel and pressed her bell. There was no doorman, just a locked door between me and the inside lobby, and I needed someone to buzz me in.

  “Yes?” a woman’s voice called on the intercom.

  “It’s Christine Bennett,” I called back. “Can I come up?” I said it because I couldn’t think of anything else that would give me a greater chance of entry.

  “Who?” she called back.

  “Chris Bennett. Can I come in?”

  There was a pause and then the buzzer sounded. I ran to the door and pushed it, feeling a surge of triumph. I had successfully negotiated the hardest part of my visit.

  The Knoxes lived on the sixth floor, and the elevator took me up so smoothly, I was surprised. No one was looking out for me, so I found the apartment and pressed the bell.

  “Who is it?” she said, opening a peephole in the door.

  I was standing squarely in front of it so she could size me up. It’s my firm conviction that I look unthreatening, “Christine Bennett.”

  She unbolted and opened the door a crack, and I saw the protective chain. “Do I know you?”

  She was only a sliver of a woman, an eye and a nose, some hair colored a rather frightful red. “It’s about your mother,” I said.

  I know that there are families torn apart by a hate so great that they engender murderous feelings, but I had met Joanne’s mother, and I didn’t think that hatred was the problem; I thought it was more likely misunderstanding. Whatever it was, I apparently said the right thing.

  “My mother? Just a minute.” She closed and reopened the door, this time wide enough for me to pass through. As I entered, I smelled a dinner cooking, and through the doorway to the kitchen, saw the implements of cooking on a counter.

  Joanne Beadles Knox was a carbon copy of her mother except for the color of her hair. The daughter was a little taller, but she had the thin, almost bony build of her mother. I could have picked her out of a crowd without a picture. Even their voices were the same.

  “Come on in,” she said. “The kitchen’s a little messy, but we can sit at the table.” She was wearing a black wool skirt and a black sweater tucked inside it. Around her waist was a wide belt with a handsome buckle. Her stockinged feet were shod with heavy sneakers, as though she had kicked off her heels when she came home to cook and be comfortable.

  The table in the dinette was round and clear except for a used coffee mug. She pushed it aside.

  “You wanna give me your coat?”

  “That’s OK.” I took it off and draped it on a chair.

  “So what’s this about my mother?”

  “I saw her last week and she talked about you.”

  “You saw her?” She smiled as though she recognized the joke. “My mother is still alive?”

  “She’s been married to Mike Carpenter for a long time, and they live in a little house about twenty minutes from where she used to live.”

  “I don’t know any Mike Carpenter.”

  “Mrs. Knox, I think your mother would like very much to see you again. I have her address here, and if you give me your permission, I’ll give her yours.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. Her forehead had wrinkled. “Boy, would I like a cigarette right now, but I gave them up again two weeks ago and I’ve really been good.”

  That was all I needed, a little more guilt laid on me. “I really came to ask you about J.J. Eberling.”

  She put her hands on the edge of the table as though she were about to push herself away. Her nails were painted a deep red and looked well manicured. “Is he still alive?”

  “No, he isn’t, so you can talk freely.”

  “Who the hell are you, lady? You investigating me or something?”

  “A body was found in the basement of the church in Studsburg,” I said, feeling as though I’d said it so many times that the whole world ought to know about it by now. “Maybe you saw something on television.”

  “I did. A couple of weeks ago.”

  “I’ve been trying to find out who she is and who killed her. For a little while, I thought the body might be you.”

  She nodded and said, “Yeah. I’m glad it wasn’t.”

  “One of the people I talked to was Darlene Jackson.”

  “Darlene,” she said with a little smile. “I remember Darlene.”

  “She worked for the Eberlings before you did.”

  “Yeah. She told me about him. She warned me.”

  “I know that something happened. Can you tell me about it?”

  “What does this have to do with the body?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to find out. Everyone I talk to from Studsburg just shuts up when I mention Mr. Eberling. Somehow I think you know something that no one else will tell me.”

  “I know something,” she said.

  I had thought she might volunteer, but instead she just sat and looked at me.

  “Could you tell me about it? About Mr. Eberling?”

  “He was rich and powerful and he got away with murder.”

  “Murder?”

  “Well, I don’t mean that for real. I mean he did what he wanted, and nobody stopped him.”

  “Like what?” I prompted.

  “Like what he did to Darlene. He tried it with me, too, but I made him stop.”

  “How?”

  “I just told him I wouldn’t stand for it.”

  I was starting to feel the Studsburg runaround had extended to include her. I decided to be more direct. “Mr. Eberling gave you a lot of money.”

  “Who, me? He never gave me money.”

  “Your mother said—”

  “My mother doesn’t know. She never met him. She didn’t know what was going on.”

  “What was going on?”

  “I worked for them; he tried to … you know.”

  “Please, Mrs. Knox. A young woman was murdered. Something was going on in that town that no one will talk about. J.J. Eberling’s dead now. He can’t hurt you. J.J. Eberling gave you a lot of money. I need to know why.”

  “He didn’t give me a cent that I didn’t earn. That’s it.”

  I felt weary and at the end of my patience. This was the person I had counted on to break the silence, to tell me something no one else would, to give me the scrap of information I needed to put everything I knew together and come up with an answer. Now she was stonewalling, too. “Mrs. Knox, you gave your mother ten hundred-dollar bills,” I said, watching her face. “She put that money away for years because she thought you would come back and she wanted to give it to you, she wanted you to have it.”

  Her eyes were riveted on me, and as I watched, they formed tears. “She called me a whore,” she said, her voice breaking and the tears spilling. “You know what it feels like when your own mother calls you that?”

  I could only think how different were the recollections of the two parties to that terrible conversation. “She told me she loved you,” I said. “She tried very hard to find you. If she said anything like that, she’s paid for it a hundred times over. She saved the money for you. She didn’t touch it
till she and Mike bought the house. The money was her down payment. Please tell me why he gave it to you.”

  “The bitch,” she said, reaching for a tissue. “She never told me in her whole life she loved me.”

  “She would tell you now.”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” she screamed. “When I needed it, it wasn’t there. When I was a young kid and I wanted a mother, what did I have? You know what I said to her that last day? I said come with me. We’ll go to New York together. We’ll go anywhere together. I had enough to keep us going a long time.”

  “She’s sorry now.”

  “Sure she’s sorry. I thought she was dead till you came to the door. I tried to call her a long time ago—my husband said I should. She wasn’t even listed. How did I know she got married?”

  We sat quietly for a minute or two. I didn’t know how to ask her again what I wanted to know. My question—my presence—had reopened the sorest wounds of her life, and it wasn’t within my province to heal them. I felt terrible about what I’d done to her, and I’d lost my last good prospect for a lead to Candy’s killer. I stood up and took my coat off the chair.

  “You sure Eberling’s dead?” she asked in a throaty voice.

  “There’s a death certificate in the county files.”

  “I heard something one night.”

  I sat down, my coat over my lap, my heart thumping.

  “He had company for dinner, two men. It was a little after I started working there. She said she needed me till after dinner and could I stay. Someone would drive me home. It meant a couple of dollars more, so I stayed. The three of them went into his study after dinner. I brought them coffee and cigars. They were Cuban cigars, and you couldn’t get them in those days because of Castro. But he had them. I could smell them when I went into the room.

  “I was trying to keep out of their way,” she went on. “I could see they were doing some kind of business. But Mrs. Eberling was nervous like. She wanted to make sure they had everything they needed, and she told me to go back and check if they wanted more coffee. When I went in, Mr. Eberling was handing an envelope to the general.”

  “A general? You mean in the army?”

  “Yeah, in the army. He was in uniform and I saw the star on his shoulder.”

  “Could he have been Mr. Eberling’s father?”

  “No way. Mr. Eberling called him Bill a couple of times, and the other man called him General something, I don’t remember what. Maybe Fitzpatrick or something like that.”

  “So Mr. Eberling was giving the general an envelope.”

  “And he dropped it when I came in, and it was money. I mean, it was more money than I’d ever seen in my whole life. Lots and lots of hundred-dollar bills.”

  “Like a payoff,” I said.

  “You bet it was a payoff. They were talking all night about that dam they were building and how it would work. And then there was the money.”

  “Mrs. Knox, do you remember the name of the third man in that room?”

  “Oh yeah. His name was Fred Mayor. I wrote all these things down in case I needed them. I heard the general call him Mr. Mayor a couple of times. And Mr. Eberling called him Fred.”

  The third man was Fred Larkin.

  “You don’t really have to tell me what happened after that,” I said. It looked pretty plain to me, a simple case of extortion by a girl seizing on a situation that had fallen in her lap as the envelope of money had fallen on the table.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said. “I didn’t start out to blackmail him. He really came to me and said I should live in a nice apartment, that I was too old to live with my mother. He got me a place that was furnished. I never even knew if he furnished it himself or he rented it that way. He said if I talked about what I’d seen that night, it could mean a serious embarrassment. That’s how he put it. I was so dumb, I didn’t even know what was going on in that town, that it was supposed to be flooded. But I could see there was something going on. Generals shouldn’t be taking money like that. I was a little scared, but I knew enough to know that what I’d seen was worth something, more than just a furnished apartment. I knew the Eberlings were moving because they’d been talking about building a new house somewhere. I kept working there, but she told me it would be all over when they moved.”

  “So you were out of a job then.”

  “Right. So I talked to him one day—he used to be around during the day sometimes—and I told him I wanted to go to New York or someplace and I didn’t have enough money. That’s how I said it, that I needed some money to get started.”

  “And he gave you the thousand dollars.”

  She laughed. “He gave me a hell of a lot more than that. He gave me five. I gave my mother one and kept the rest for myself. He also got me an apartment in New York. He didn’t pay for it, he just told me where to go to find an apartment. I lived there till I got married and moved here.”

  I told her I had gotten information from the super in her old building.

  She shook her head. “How the hell did you find out about that place?”

  I sketched it out for her.

  She laughed again. “And I thought I covered my tracks pretty good.”

  “The super said someone beat you up while you were living there. I’ve been wondering about that.”

  She said, “Yeah,” and lowered her eyes. “I got greedy. I figured if Eberling was good for five, he was good for ten. I wrote and asked for more money. I didn’t hear from him till he showed up one night and beat the hell out of me. Cracked one of my ribs. He said if I ever asked for another cent or opened my mouth about what I’d seen, he’d kill me. I never did. I believed him.”

  She looked completely worn-out. I got up and put my coat on, thanked her for telling a story that she had hoped she would never have to repeat. Then I said, “About your mother.”

  “Get out,” she said. “OK? I did my duty and told you what you want to know. It had nothing to do with any girl being killed. Now, would you please just get out?”

  I took the elevator down and went outside. It had turned colder and meaner out. I turned toward Broadway where the subway was and started walking slowly, the pieces of information sliding into place, the gaps now fewer, my pulse rate probably higher. At Broadway I waited for the light. I was on the east side of the divided street, and downtown trains ran along the west side. As the light turned green, I stepped off the curb as someone behind me called, “Wait! Wait!”

  At the divider, I turned to look behind me. Joanna Knox, dressed in a mink coat and the clunky sneakers, was running down the street, waving and calling, her red hair flying. I had just enough green left to make it back to the sidewalk.

  Her eyes were streaming as she reached me, her makeup dissolving in rivulets. “I need the address,” she said. “My mother. Do you still have her address? She has grandkids she never saw.”

  “Of course I do.” I smiled, although I felt a little teary myself.

  “I don’t have a pencil or anything.”

  “I do.” I took my steno book out of my bag, found a pen, and leafed through the pages till I found the address of Ginny Carpenter. I wrote it carefully, putting “Mike” in parens. “She really wants to see you.”

  “Thank you.” She read the paper and nodded. “God bless,” she said, and turned and walked back to her apartment.

  27

  “Are you thinking the same thing I am?” Jack said. He was changing his clothes for his law school class, and he had very little time.

  “There was a payoff that had to do with the building of the dam.”

  “You said the mayor told you they’d fought the dam.”

  “Yes. But he said the little people never won those fights.”

  “What else could he say if he was in on the payoff?”

  “When we took that walk on Sunday—”

  “That’s just what I’m thinking. There was a kind of natural basin upstream. If they had built the dam the other side of Studsb
urg, they wouldn’t have had to flood a whole town and make five hundred people find new places to live. It sure as hell had to be a lot more expensive for the government than paying a couple of farmers for the value of their land. Could be Eberling and Larkin had big stakes in Studsburg, and this was their way of getting their money out.”

  “Maybe it was everybody’s way out, Jack. Amy Broderick told me her father had been commuting to Rochester for a long time and they moved up there after they left Studsburg. I’ll bet a lot of people wanted to sell and couldn’t, and the dam represented a windfall. J.J. Eberling was an army brat. He could have known people very high up through his father, and he bribed this general to see to it that the dam was placed downstream of Studsburg instead of downstream of those farms and upstream of Studsburg.”

  “Sounds like it’s falling into place.” He reached into the closet and pulled out a tie. “How’s this with my jacket?”

  “Looks great to me. What do you need a tie for? You should see what the kids wear at the college I teach at.”

  “I am a law student, my dear. And what I lack in legal expertise, I make up for with my fashion wardrobe.”

  “You should never ask an ex-nun if something matches,” I warned him. “Especially if she wore a habit. They’re notorious for having no sense of what goes with what.”

  “You’re different and I’m late. Give me one for the road.”

  We kissed and he picked up some notebooks and dashed for the door. “Hey, almost forgot to tell you. I got a call from Albany this afternoon. Your friend Degenkamp had a registered thirty-eight when he lived in Studsburg.”

  “Degenkamp?”

  “Right.”

  “What about Larkin?”

  “Nothing registered. And neither one has a registered handgun now. Lock up when you leave, and let me know where you are tomorrow.”

  “I will,” I called as he bounded down the stairs. A little while later I drove home.

  I called the Stiflers as soon as I got there and asked if I could come over. I had not told them that Henry Degenkamp had died, but they already knew. The younger Mrs. D. had called them, and they were planning to drive to Ithaca for the funeral on Friday.