The Labor Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  —

  When Eddie was napping, Joseph and I went outside to stroll and have our last conversation together before she left. We talked mostly about St. Stephen’s. They had one novice joining the convent in the fall, and I could tell from Joseph’s voice and from her comments that she was worried about the future of the convent. Like so many others, it was aging and little new blood was being added. Joseph was young enough that she had decades ahead of her as an active nun, but there were few of my age and almost none in their twenties. It was depressing to think about, that this wonderful institution might come to an end, especially when the college associated with it had a fine reputation. Already, Joseph had had to hire several secular teachers, one of whom I knew replaced me.

  But the nuns who remained were in good health. Sister Cecilia, who was studying nursing in New York, would be returning within a year and she would be able to work in a nearby hospital and care for the elderly nuns in the Villa as well. So ultimately Joseph was upbeat, no surprise to me.

  We stopped and chatted with Marti Jorgensen, who was sitting on a chair on the beach in shorts and a shirt. Too cool for a dip today, she told us. But a nice breeze to sit in.

  We went back to the house, talking about the Norrises and the Hersheys, what they knew and what they might be holding back.

  “What we have to remember,” Joseph said, “is that if Tina went around asking questions, she may have stirred up old memories and old grudges, reminded people of buried truths. I think someone may have gotten scared or possibly may have made a connection that went unnoticed for all those years.”

  “And somehow Ken Buckley was part of it and was made to pay for it.”

  “Whether he was guilty or not.”

  Eddie woke up and then it was lunchtime, first his and then ours. And when it was over, Joseph was ready to leave. Jack carried her little bag downstairs and I put it on the wagon, more so that Joseph could see how things happened on Fire Island than because it was too heavy to carry to the ferry.

  She had said good-bye to Eddie when he went up for his nap, and now she said it to Jack, and we left.

  “There’s one last thing,” she said, as we approached the bay. In the distance we could see the ferry coming toward the shore, and on the pier were several people with empty red wagons, waiting for friends. “I know Chief La Coste is a dear old man, and he seems like a very kind person and deeply affected by Tina’s death, but I don’t think he’s entirely truthful when he talks about the Great Fire.”

  “And other things. I’m not sure where that leaves me.”

  “I’m not sure either, Chris. But I believe the Hersheys and the Norrises are also keeping things to themselves. It looks like the ferry is landing.”

  “It is. I wish we’d had more time together.”

  “So do I, but considering that I dashed out on almost no notice at all, it’s been a wonderful time.”

  “For us, too.”

  We hugged and I carried her bag to the ferry.

  The last thing she said was, “Look for that key, Chris, and when you find it, remember what I said.”

  I waited till the ferry pulled away, waving and throwing kisses, feeling teary at her departure although I was deeply happy she had been able to come. When the moving boat became too small for me to see her anymore, I turned and went back to begin our big cleanup.

  22

  I walked into the kitchen and found Jack holding up the missing key. “Where did you find it?” I asked incredulously.

  “On the hook on the board where it’s been the last two weeks.”

  “And where it wasn’t yesterday and today.”

  “Sister Joseph had it.”

  “You think so?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “The last thing she said to me was, ‘Look for that key and when you find it, remember what I said.’ She took it to make a point.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Let me think a minute.” I sat down at the table and closed my eyes, my head in my hand, trying to remember what had been said only yesterday when I discovered it was missing. I had thought Kyle took it. I had asked Marti last night. But Joseph had said something when I saw it was gone. Think, I told myself. “She asked me if I gave it to anyone,” I said finally.

  “And you said no.”

  “And it was the truth. I didn’t give it to anyone. Someone took it but I didn’t give it. You know, the Hersheys had the key to the Norrises’ house. They said they didn’t give it to anyone.”

  “But someone who knew where it was usually kept could have taken it. That’s opportunity. One of the most basic supports in any proof of a crime is that your suspect had the opportunity to commit it. So technically the Hersheys didn’t lie when they said they hadn’t given the key to anyone.”

  “They didn’t lie, but they may have withheld the truth. They know who took that key, Jack. They just don’t want to say.”

  —

  When Jack and I were dating, he lived in a small but very nice apartment in Brooklyn Heights. I remember the first time I walked into it, how everything was in place, everything very clean. One never really knows, I guess, whether an apartment is scrubbed in anticipation or out of habit. But Jack turned out to be one of those men who pick up after themselves, and he doesn’t leave messes for me to clean up.

  So I hadn’t been surprised, when I got back to the house, to find he had been vacuuming the living room. I started picking up toys, even flattening myself on the floor to find things under the furniture. Whether or not the murders of Ken Buckley and Tina Frisch were solved, we were going home tomorrow.

  We worked hard all afternoon, even after Eddie got up, often working around him. The Jorgensens had invited us for a farewell dinner and we wanted to have the house ready by the time we left. When the phone rang in the middle of the afternoon, I was pretty surprised. I was even more surprised when I answered.

  “Is this Chris?” It was a woman.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “This is Dodie Murchison.”

  “Dodie. I’m glad you called.”

  “I need to talk to you. Can you meet me tonight?”

  “Where?”

  “Well, not on Fire Island. I’m not setting foot on that island till this is cleared up.”

  “Tonight would be very difficult with the reduced ferry schedule. But we’re leaving tomorrow after lunch.”

  There was silence. Then, “I guess one day won’t make that much difference. Is it true that Tina was murdered?”

  “It’s true. It happened Wednesday night. Her body was discovered Thursday morning.” Those were facts she could find out from anyone in Blue Harbor and probably from the newspaper as well.

  “That’s what I thought. Where do you live?”

  “On the north side of the Long Island Sound.”

  “OK. I can get there. I’d rather not meet you in your home. Is there someplace—?”

  “Yes. There’s a residence for retarded adults in my town, Oakwood. My cousin lives there. What time do you want to meet?”

  “You call it. You have a family. Pick a time that’s convenient.”

  “Seven.”

  “Seven is good. How do I get there?”

  “It’s called Greenwillow,” I said, and I gave her directions as though she were coming from New York.

  “I’m trusting you, Chris. If you bring the police with you—”

  “I won’t. I’ll come alone. We can sit in the administrator’s office and talk. You won’t have to give your name when you come in. Just say you’re looking for me. I’ll get there early.”

  “I appreciate this. You won’t let the police know, any police.”

  “I won’t let anyone know.”

  “See you tomorrow at seven.”

  We stopped our cleaning long enough to discuss this new turn of events. Jack didn’t look particularly happy. “She’s a suspect in a homicide,” he said, as though I needed reminding.

  “She has inform
ation that we need. I don’t think she’s going to take me hostage in Greenwillow.”

  “Maybe not, but neither of us is convinced she’s innocent.”

  “Or the opposite. I have to do this, Jack. She knows things that we don’t know. If I tell Curt Springer where she’ll be tomorrow night, he’ll have her arrested. She’s an attorney and that could be the end of her career.”

  “She’s an attorney, you’re right, and she probably knows how to lie very artfully.”

  “Artfully,” I said. “That doesn’t sound like the kind of word you’d use.”

  He grinned. “OK, have it your way. Suppose we ask Elsie Rivers to come and stay with Eddie, and I’ll sit in another room just to prove to myself that I’m wasting my time.”

  “She said not to tell any police she was coming.”

  “You already told me. I’m police.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way. OK, I’ll call Elsie. She’s probably dying to see Eddie anyway.”

  So that’s what we did. Elsie is an old friend of my mother’s, and she’s as much a surrogate grandmother as Eddie will ever have. She was his first baby-sitter and she was born to the job.

  From that moment on, I flew through my work.

  —

  Everything was a “last” after we finished. We dashed to the pool and took our last swims. We walked on the beach and told Eddie we were going home tomorrow. We said good-bye to the few people we recognized as we walked. We went back to the house and packed away everything that was dry and hung up the suits we had just worn on the line out back. We picked the blueberries that were left on the bushes and brought them inside. Eddie’s little fingers popped one after the other into his mouth. This fall we would buy a couple of bushes and plant them in our backyard.

  We got to the Jorgensens’ after Eddie was fast asleep and set him down in their bedroom as we had done before. Then we joined Al and Marti on the deck for cocktails.

  “Find that key?” Al asked, as he handed me a glass.

  “We did. It was just misplaced.”

  “Nothing causes more panic than a missing key,” Marti said, and she told us a tale of a calamitous situation she had lived through a couple of years ago.

  “Nice woman, that Sister Joseph,” Al said afterwards.

  “Thank you. She’s a good friend and whenever I introduce her, people are impressed.”

  “We didn’t realize you’d been a nun yourself.”

  I did some explaining, having become used to the surprise of people who see me as a wife and mother, as a teacher, as a volunteer. When I’d dispensed with that, Al said, “Well, I don’t know if you’ve heard the news, but Curt Springer thinks he has a suspect in the murders.”

  I looked at Jack, who said, “The lawyer?”

  “Right you are. He’s got her fingerprints all over the area where Tina’s body was found, and some other things that he isn’t talking about. Murchison, I think her name is. You know she got out on the first ferry the next morning.”

  “I heard. I’d sure like to find out what other evidence he has. And how does he tie her in to the Buckley murder?”

  “Says her prints were picked up in the Buckley house, too. That’s pretty amazing if she wasn’t there.”

  “Has he found her yet?” I asked.

  “Not when I talked to him. They’ve got one of those APBs out on her in several states. They’ll find her. You don’t often find a woman committing a murder by strangling, do you? But she probably does a lot of exercising. All those young people do.”

  Marti threw her hands up. “Al really thinks that woman did it. I don’t. I could believe a woman would shoot Ken Buckley. To tell the truth, I’m surprised none of them did it before now.” She laughed. “But putting your hands around the neck of a young girl? I couldn’t do it, not if she’d just killed my child. It’s too, you know, personal. I’d go for the gun.”

  “You and Al didn’t see anything that night, did you?”

  Jack asked.

  “Not a thing. We always sit facing out back. We paid for that view and we get our money’s worth.” From the back of their house they could see the ocean past the Margulies’s backyard.

  We talked and ate and had a good time, and finally we said good-bye. Marti kissed our sleeping son and we all wished each other a good winter.

  “And no strong winds,” Al said. It was the Fire Island homeowner’s dearest wish.

  —

  When we were ready to leave the next day, Jack looked around for Chief Springer but didn’t find him at any of his haunts. We had dismissed the discovery of Dodie’s fingerprints in the Buckley house as meaningless. We knew she had been there so it wasn’t surprising that she had touched things. Jack even speculated that Springer had nothing else in the way of evidence and was just grandstanding.

  After Eddie was sleeping, we walked down to the ferry, pulling the red wagon with our luggage, hoping Eddie would get his nap as we moved from island to ferry to car and then to the long drive home. We hung up the empty wagon on its hook and locked it safely just before the ferry pulled alongside the dock.

  All the way home we talked about Harry Hershey. He had been a fireman and knew Ken Buckley. Maybe they had an agreement. When the Norrises weren’t home, Ken could take their key from the Hersheys’ house and use the empty house next door for whatever he wanted. But something terrible and unforeseen happened and the house burned down. Now, fifteen years later, Ken decided to make amends in a way that would implicate the Hersheys and Harry took revenge. It was a new look at a case that was baffling me more each day.

  —

  It was the longest we had ever left our house empty and as we entered, we both immediately felt the need of fresh air. Jack went around opening windows and turning on fans and pretty soon we were breathing easier. Eddie seemed to recognize the house and especially his bedroom, and he sat on the floor and looked at toys he had forgotten he had.

  “You’re home now, Eddie,” I said.

  He uttered a few syllables and crawled over to his crib, grabbed the highest part he could reach, and pulled himself up to a standing position.

  “Jack,” I shouted down the stairs. “Come up here. Eddie’s standing!” I could hardly believe it. It had happened so suddenly.

  Hanging on with both hands, Eddie turned to me and gave me a big smile.

  “You know you’ve done something wonderful, don’t you?” I said.

  Jack bounded up the stairs and into the room. “How do you like that?” He edged closer to the crib, as though he might upset the little applecart.

  Eddie looked at him and giggled. Then he let go one hand, lost his grip and his footing, and dropped onto his rump, bursting into tears as he hit the floor.

  I picked him up and told him how wonderful he was, and he put his head on my shoulder and whimpered a little. Then we began to get ready for bath and supper.

  —

  There were a million phone messages, none of them very significant. When I had a free moment, I called Melanie Gross back, since she was the person I missed most.

  “Chris! You’re back. What on earth is going on out there on Fire Island?”

  “Did you hear something?”

  “Uncle Max got a call from a fireman that the chief had been murdered. What happened?”

  I gave her the condensed version and promised to get together with her the next afternoon. She had already begun teaching, as I would in a couple of days myself. Home barely an hour, we felt that the summer seemed a long time ago.

  We had stopped at the Oakwood Deli and gotten cold cuts for our dinner and the makings of tomorrow’s breakfast since the house was as bare as we had left it. When Eddie was asleep in his own crib, we sat down to wolf down the sandwiches. Elsie came while we were still eating, and Jack took off in his car to get to Greenwillow first. It was only a few minutes’ drive from home, and I had arranged tonight’s meeting yesterday by telephone, so I got Elsie comfortable and then dashed out myself.

 
My car is so old and has so much mileage on it that it’s become a bone of contention between Jack and me. He uses his car in his police work. As a detective, he needs to drive to crime scenes and he usually uses his own car, so it has to be in top-notch condition. My car takes me where I need to go, gives me very little trouble, and makes Jack very unhappy. He imagines breakdowns when I am alone or with Eddie. He fears complications that will endanger us. He wants me to buy a new car that he can count on, that will be more comfortable, that will protect us from a hostile world. I want to keep this car until it passes peacefully into oblivion and then, and only then, will I think about its replacement.

  On this September evening, I got into it with a quick prayer that it would start after two weeks of sitting in the garage. The battery sounded weak as I turned the key, and nothing happened on the first try. I knew that in case of real trouble, Elsie would let me take hers, but I was determined. I took a deep breath, turned the key again, and after a fearful moment, the motor caught, roaring into life. I said, “Thank you, sweetheart,” aloud, backed out of the garage, and was on my way.

  23

  Greenwillow has a small parking lot on its premises for the parents and other relatives of the residents who come to visit, usually on the weekends. As I turned into the drive, I saw that Jack’s car was not there, but I assumed he had dropped it somewhere, perhaps in the nearby bank parking lot, and walked the rest of the way.

  I went to the front door and rang the bell. Jonesy, one of the permanent staff, opened the door and welcomed me.

  “Your husband’s here,” she said. “He said I’m not to say anything to the woman you’re meeting.”

  “That’s right. She isn’t here, then?”

  “Not yet. Would you like to go into the office?”

  “Sure.” I went in, leaving the door open. “If the doorbell rings, I’ll answer it, OK?”