by Lee Harris
“Until someone confessed to you that he had killed the schoolteacher.”
“You know I can’t respond to that.”
“Yes, I do know.” I was certain now that I was right. If he had not known, he would have denied it. There would have been no reason for him not to. “What happened to the coins?” I asked.
“I took them with me. I’d broken the sealed package they were displayed in to put them in the box. When I got to Rochester, I was able to find a picture framer to set them up again.” He nodded toward the wall behind me. “They’re right over there”
I went and looked. The familiar coins were still bright and shiny, pure and untouched. His idea of burying them had been a good one. Made of metal, they would not have bounced around much, not sustained damage.
“Have you heard that Henry Degenkamp is dead?” I asked, returning to my chair.
“I got a phone call. They said it was a heart attack.”
“Father, Henry died because he knew who murdered Candy Phillips.”
He shook his head slowly. “You know better than this, Chris.”
“I’m not asking you to tell me what you aren’t allowed to tell me. I’m asking for guidance. Even if I can’t bring this man to justice, I want him exposed.”
“I’ll tell you whatever I know that I’ve learned outside the confessional.”
“Fred Larkin and Candy Phillips were lovers. Gwen Larkin found out about it, and Fred killed Candy the night of the fireworks. He probably lured her there with some kind of promise. She had already left Studsburg at the end of the semester and she came back for the Fourth of July. After he killed her, his relationship with his wife deteriorated. Less than a year later he rigged her car and she went off the road and hit a tree and died. After it happened, he never told anyone from Studsburg except his closest friends that she was dead.”
“I knew she was dead,” the priest said. “And if Fred killed her, he didn’t tell me, and I don’t believe he did. I think he loved Gwen. While they were married, I don’t think there was another woman in his life. I don’t for one moment believe that he and the schoolteacher were lovers. I’m sorry to say that just about everything you believe to be true is false, Chris. If that’s the guidance you need, I hope it helps you.”
“Father, she was beautiful and happy and twenty-four years old. Everyone in that town that I’ve talked to has been uncooperative because they were all involved in a scam. Every homeowner in Studsburg benefited from it, whether they knew there’d been a payoff or not. If Candy and Larkin weren’t lovers, then maybe she was blackmailing him or threatening to expose him for his part in the scam.”
Father Hartman looked down at the table in front of him, then raised his eyes to meet mine. “You’re right. There was a scam, and the whole town was part of it. It’s possible she knew. At some point it was talked about almost openly. There were people who were euphoric at the prospect of the buy-out.
I heard about it, as you can imagine. Not owning property, I was a completely disinterested party, and I chose to stay out of the whole affair. During the years I served in Studsburg, many people tried to sell their homes, especially older people who had retired and wanted to move somewhere warmer. Studsburg had been a dying town for many years. Their industry had dried up and there were no expectations for anything new coming in. When the possibility of a government buy-out appeared, there was almost a mass hysteria. People saw a way out from the bondage of real estate. Oh, there were a few diehards, but they were won over very quickly. The prospect of quick, easy money was just too attractive for anyone to turn down. The number of people with uneasy consciences was very small.” He said it with sadness, as if his ministry had failed to overcome greed, one of the seven deadly sins.
“I guess I’m not surprised,” I said. “They were ordinary people, and it didn’t take much to convince themselves they deserved a windfall.”
“That’s certainly how they looked at it.”
He hadn’t really responded to my suggestion that Candy was angry enough at the scam that she might be threatening to expose Larkin if he didn’t get the town out of it. I took the sixth grade picture out of my bag, opened the folder, and laid it on the table in front of Father Hartman.
He looked at it almost sadly, then smiled. “That’s the little Mulholland girl in the front row.”
“Amy Broderick. She gave me the picture last week.”
“Her brother was quite a handful.”
“He said that at thirteen he was madly in love with Miss Phillips.”
“With all their faults, they were a wonderful parish.” He handed the picture back to me and rose. “I think I’ve given you all the guidance I can, Chris. What will you do now?”
I had been wondering the same thing. “I have only two options left. I think I’ll sleep on it.”
* * *
I arrived at Sacred Heart too late for dinner, but one of the nuns helped scrape together a sandwich for me, and there was ice cream in the freezer. I sat at a counter in the kitchen and ate while I tried to sort out what I had learned today. I found that I was convinced that no one in Studsburg—except the murderer and perhaps one other person—knew that Candy had been killed. Even the handful of people like the younger Stiflers who had received the last issue of the Herald had no reason to think the young schoolteacher had met with foul play. She had simply left the town, and they had never seen her again. But they all knew that something was going on between Candy and Larkin. And they were all covering for him, and it had to be because they owed him. But Father Hartman seemed very certain that Candy and Larkin had not been lovers. Which left only a threat and a deadly retaliation.
Or did it? After washing my dishes, I went up to my mirrorless room and sat in the chair with my notes on my lap. Suddenly the contrast between a nun’s cell and a secular woman’s bedroom seemed starker than I had ever observed. For all that I am a quiet, somewhat introverted person, at home I frequently reach outward. I call Jack because I want to hear his voice. I adjust my morning walk so that I will run into Melanie Gross and have the opportunity to talk to her. I call her sometimes at night to let her know I am still her friend and neighbor even though I haven’t seen her for a while. I turn on the radio or television set to bring the outside world into mine.
But the nuns turn inward. There is a lamp on the desk that can be turned on or off, a window shade that can be pulled up or down. The outside world that the window lets in is the same slice every day, varied only by seasons and weather. There is no phone at your fingertips, and after a fairly early hour, there is also no conversation. There is only introspection.
Eventually that night, it began to work for me. After I had gone over my notes several times, I turned off the overhead light and flicked off the lamp. I pulled the window shade up as far as it would go and looked out over the dark landscape. Here, too, there had been some snow, although not much. But there was a moon out tonight, and my eyes quickly adjusted to the meager light, taking in the white overlay, the shadowy trees, the distant chapel, the miniature hills and valleys of the convent’s property. And as I looked at the clean, snowy fields, thinking and not thinking, I heard the echo.
People say things, but the message doesn’t always penetrate. Like raindrops on a well-waterproofed raincoat, the words just sit there, round and clear and transparent. Eventually, if they stay long enough, if no one brushes them away, they’re soaked up; the message hits its mark.
What was it Father Hartman had said about Fred and Gwen Larkin? I listened to the echo several times and then pulled down the shade.
I had told Father Hartman I had two options left. I could go back and rehash everything with Fred Larkin, who might well throw me out this time. Or I could explore the only lead I had that was completely new.
The choice was pretty clear.
30
Scranton is a sizable town in northeastern Pennsylvania, but the forwarding address I had from the post office for Candy Phillips was suburban, much l
ike the little New York State town she had lived in the year she taught in Studsburg. I stopped at the police station and asked for directions. The street, at least, still existed.
So did the house. It was a very different style from the last one she had lived in, older and larger, rambling and verandaed, the kind that can easily be made into a boarding house or rescued by an energetic couple anxious to gentrify the neighborhood. As I approached the door, I heard a piano, played by someone with considerably more talent than a child doing études. Out of respect, I waited till the music stopped to ring the bell.
The door was opened by a thin, stooped old man who looked me up and down and then said, “The room’s gone.”
“I’m not looking for a room. I’m looking for someone who lived here.”
“Who’s that?”
“Candy Phillips.”
“Don’t remember any Candy, don’t remember any Phillips.”
“It was a long time ago. She may not have been here long.”
A woman appeared, holding a dust mop. “I can take care of it, Dad. Go back to your music.” She gave me a smile nom a plump, bespectacled face. “I’m afraid we let the room last night. If you’d like to leave your name—”
I told her my name and repeated my mission. She shook her head, said she was Helen Little, and said Candy’s name didn’t ring a bell. I asked her how long her family had lived there.
“A long time. My parents bought the house after the war.”
“This young woman was going to teach somewhere locally. She probably took a room for a year or at least for the academic year. It was about thirty years ago, maybe a few months more than that.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Did she stay the year?”
“She probably only stayed a few days or a week.” The piano playing had begun again, something melodic that I thought might be Chopin.
I must have smiled, because she said, “My father loves to play.”
I took the sixth grade picture out of my bag and showed it to her.
“It’s hard to remember a face after so long,” she said. “But I do remember that someone took a room when I was a kid and then went away.”
“Did she leave any luggage?”
Her face brightened and she gave me a big grin. “Come with me,” she said.
I followed her to the kitchen and then down a flight of stairs to the basement. It looked like most basements that have endured a single owner for many decades. Old, useless furniture that no one wanted and no one could part with was stashed in one section. Garden equipment was stored in another. Cartons of who knew what were piled wherever they fit.
“I’d completely forgotten those suitcases,” she said, “but I know they’re here. We got a flood one year, and I remember putting them on top of something.”
“Did you ever look inside?”
“I just don’t remember. Maybe my father did.”
We both started looking, but she came up with them first. “Success!” she called. “Here’s one.” She lifted it and set it down on top of a carton. “And here’s the other. Not bad.” She looked triumphant.
“Not bad at all. Would you mind if I opened them?”
“Open them, take them away, do anything you want. If there’s any money in them—”
“I doubt there is, but why don’t you watch while I go through the contents.”
We each carried one upstairs and set them down in the large, homey kitchen. The lock on the larger one was locked, and we broke it open with a screwdriver. Inside were most of Candy Phillips’s clothes and little else. I stuck my hands in the pockets along the sides but found nothing except a pair of nylon stockings, probably worn and not yet washed, a wad of fresh tissues, and a pair of black leather gloves lined with wool.
The smaller suitcase was the train case with the mirrored top that Monica Thurston had described. It wasn’t locked, and that was where the great secrets of Candida Phillips’s life were neatly stored. As I removed a thick manila envelope, Mrs. Little’s father came into the kitchen.
“Was that that girl where the letters went back and forth?”
“That would be the one,” I said.
“They sent ’em here, she never came back, I sent ’em there, they came back again.”
“Do you know what happened to them?”
“They’re in there somewhere. I put ’em in before I threw the bags in the basement. You’ll find ’em.”
I wished desperately I were alone. I wanted to uncover the details of Candy’s life in privacy, as though I were unclothing her. It seemed indecent for two strangers to stand by and watch something so intimate. As for me, in the course of the last two and a half weeks, I had become her spiritual surrogate.
“Go ahead, you’ll find ’em,” the old man urged.
“Leave her alone, Dad,” his daughter said gently. Then to me, “What happened to her?”
“She died the day after she left here.”
“How terrible. And no one knew?”
“Her body was hidden.”
I pulled everything out of the envelope and put it on the table. I could feel Helen Little over my shoulder.
She laughed. “Well, if there isn’t any money, I’m not interested.”
“You think there’s money?” her father asked.
“Doesn’t look like it, Dad. I thought maybe we’d come into a windfall.” She moved away from the table, and her father left the kitchen. A minute later, I heard the piano.
There were two teaching licenses, one for Pennsylvania and one for New York. There were pictures of her from infancy through to the end of her life. The sixth, seventh, and eighth grade photos from Studsburg were there. Her mother was in several older pictures, a pretty woman who looked very much like her daughter. I found Candy’s diploma from Penn State along with several letters from Studsburg, copies of which I had seen in the county files, and from the school she had intended to teach in the fall after she was murdered.
There was also a letter that I assumed to have been written to her mother. It was from the office of the registrar of Syracuse University, and it said she could reapply for admission at any time with no prejudice. It was dated twenty-five years before the end of Studsburg. If Candy’s mother had ever reapplied, there was no indication of it among the papers. There was a Pennsylvania driving license for Shirley Phillips, a social security card, a library card, a birth certificate, a charge account card for a department store I had never heard of, but no college diploma.
In a smaller envelope there were receipts of paid hospital bills, nursing bills, doctor bills, and pharmacy bills, all from the last year of Shirley Phillips’s life, the year before her daughter came to Studsburg. I flipped through the record of a woman’s last months of life, feeling her despair and the heartache of her daughter.
There wasn’t much else, but I had found what I came for. As I put the papers back in the large envelope, the music stopped again and the old man came back into the kitchen.
“You find those letters?”
“Not yet.”
“She’s the one that left the typewriter,” he said. “When she didn’t come back for it, I gave it to my daughter. You want that, too?”
“No, thanks. I don’t need it.”
He left the room, and I reached into the elasticized pocket along the back of the train case. In it were several letters rubber-banded together. A few were from the school she was going to teach in, probably from an increasingly anxious principal wondering where his fall teacher was. They had been sent to this address, readdressed to her last New York address, and returned again by the post office. The other two letters had both been sent to Candida Phillips at her address near Studsburg. Both had been readdressed to come here, then addressed again to go back to her last address. Finally they were addressed one last time by the post office to come here again. Musical chairs.
I looked at the return addresses, feeling a combination of sadness and success. The middle initial was M.
Mrs.
Little poked her head into one of the doorways to the kitchen. “Find anything?”
“Nothing of value but the papers. Do you mind if I take them?”
“Take everything, why don’t you?”
“I will. Mrs. Little, if I give you five dollars, would you let me call New York?”
“Go ahead,” she said breezily. “Don’t worry about the money. You should see what I spend calling my daughter.”
I dialed Jack’s number at the precinct. He wasn’t at his desk, but someone went looking and he picked up the phone.
“Sergeant Brooks.”
“Jack, it’s Chris.”
“Hi. What’s up?”
“I’ve got it all now. There’s just one document I’d like to research. Do you think you can get me a birth certificate from fifty-seven years ago?”
“What city?”
“Erie, Pennsylvania,” I said, reading from the address on the letter from Syracuse. “Candida Phillips. The mother’s name was Shirley.”
“Anything special you want to know?”
“The father’s name.”
“I’ll call you tonight. You be at the convent?”
“Yes.”
“Talk to you then.”
I left a five on the table and took the suitcases to the car.
I was sitting with the nuns in the community room when he called. The television set was on, but only one or two were watching. Some were reading the paper, one doing embroidery, one writing a letter. I had told them I was pretty sure I knew who and why, and I was sorry, I couldn’t talk about it. When I was called to the phone, I was glad to leave them.
“OK,” Jack said without introduction. “You were right on the year and the mother. I can’t help you on the father. It’s recorded as unknown. I take it that doesn’t surprise you.”
“It doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“So where to now?”
“To see the father,” I said.
31
Fred Larkin opened the front door and stood barring my way in. “I think we’ve had our last conversation, Miss Bennett. So if you’ll just turn yourself around and get in your car and go back to where you came from, we’ll both be better off.”