Knit Fast, Die Young

by Mary Kruger

  “Her parents were dairy farmers before they decided to sell the farm. They probably exhibited here.”

  “When was the last agricultural fair held?”

  “I don’t know. A good ten, fifteen years ago. But yeah, she’d probably know about the road. Acushnet police have had trouble with it.”

  “Why? Teenagers having parties?”

  “Yeah, among other things. It’s a dark road where young couples like to go…”

  “Why would Nancy kill Felicia?” Josh asked, changing the subject. “There’s no connection between them.”

  “That we know of,” Briggs said. “Is she adopted?”

  “No,” Charlie said, frowning. “I know her father.”

  “Then you knew her as a baby?”

  “Well, no.”

  “She doesn’t look like Felicia,” Josh said.

  “She could look like her biological father. It’s something to check.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said, his tone skeptical. For Josh, too, it was a reach, and yet he knew that they had to investigate every possibility if they were to solve the murders.

  “Charlie, go call her—What is it?” Josh turned to the trooper who was holding out a sheet of tan paper folded in thirds.

  “We found these in the office, sir,” the trooper said.

  “The brochure?” Charlie asked.

  Briggs nodded, and unfolded the paper. The name of the festival, along with a picture of a flock of sheep, was on the front third of the brochure. The middle third was blank except for a space for an address, and there was a return address in the upper-left corner. The application form was printed inside the back third. The remaining area of the paper was dedicated to information about the festival, including directions and a small map. In the harsh light, Josh looked closely at the map and gasped. There, printed faintly but recognizably, was the forgotten back entrance to the fairgrounds. It didn’t matter if the suspects were local or from out of town. Anyone could have figured out how to get back onto the grounds. The investigation was still wide open.

  It was now seven on Sunday morning, and Josh was back at his desk. He and the others had all gone home to catch a few hours of sleep. There were more reports waiting for him. As first detective on the scene, his report on the crime scene was crucial. So were the reports on the interviews he’d conducted. Even though they could hold the out-of-towners a little longer, they had little time to spare. It would help if they could find out who Felicia’s daughter was.

  He looked across the room. Paul Bouchard, their computer expert, was at his desk, frowning at his screen. “Any luck on the adoption agencies?”

  Paul looked up from the computer. “Do you have any idea how many there are in Connecticut?” he demanded. “Not to mention she could have gone through New York or Massachusetts.”

  “She lived in Simsbury. That’s the middle of the state.” Something echoed in Josh’s head as he said this, but he couldn’t quite catch it.

  “Yeah? Well, what if Felicia went away to have the baby?”

  “What, to some sort of home?”

  “Why not? She came from a middle-class Catholic family. They were probably embarrassed.”

  “Maybe.” It still seemed like an old-fashioned concept to Josh, but then, it had happened more than twenty years earlier. Things had changed since then. “Give me the names of some agencies close to Simsbury. We’ll start there.”

  Paul pressed a button and then crossed the room to the printer. “Here.” He shoved a piece of paper at Josh. “Sunday morning. Good luck to you.”

  “At the worst we’ll get answering machines, and at the best answering services,” Josh said, picking up the phone.

  Half an hour later, Josh had lost whatever optimism he’d started with. He’d left countless messages on countless machines, and pressed countless buttons in response to voice mail instructions. Only one agency had an answering service. Its operator sounded dubious but promised to pass on the message anyway. Josh finally hung up and then sat back, frustrated. On his desk, his fifth cup of coffee had gone cold. He got another one and set to work on his reports. Pretty soon he and Charlie, along with other police, would be heading to the Welcome Inn, where two conference rooms had been reserved for them. All of the suspects, including the local ones, would be there for questioning.

  He was just finishing his report on the interview with Winston Barr when his phone rang. “Freeport Police,” he said absently, and was met with total silence. “Hello?”

  “I was told to call this number,” a voice said briskly on the other end of the line. “May I ask whom I’m talking to?”

  Josh sat up straighter. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, “This is Joshua Pierce of the Freeport Police Department.”

  “Freeport?”

  “Massachusetts. Who is this, please?”

  “Jennifer Newcomb from Wide World Adoptions. Did you call us?”

  “Yes.” Josh sat back in his chair. “We’re trying to trace someone who gave up a child for adoption about twenty years ago.”

  “Adoption records were sealed then.”

  “Yes, we know. We’d appreciate any help you could give us.”

  “Why?” she demanded.

  “Police business, Miss Newcomb. We need to know—”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that, Officer.”

  “Detective,” Josh said, put off by her abrupt manner. “It’s a matter of homicide.”

  “Murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  Josh wanted to retort that they couldn’t reveal that information, but of course that wasn’t true. They needed all the help they could get. “As I said, we’re trying to trace a woman who needed adoption services some years back.”

  Jennifer sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Detective.”

  “Look, we’re going to have a hard time getting court orders. If we could have some help, even if off the record—”

  “It’s not that,” she interrupted him. “We only do international adoptions, and we weren’t in business that long ago.”

  “Oh,” Josh said, and any hopes that he’d had fled. “I see.”

  “But, I wonder.” She was quiet a moment, and Josh didn’t interrupt. “Could you give me some of her background?”

  “Sure.” Josh filled her in without giving Felicia’s name. When he was done, Jennifer was quiet again.

  “Simsbury,” she said finally.

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder if she went to the diocese.”

  “The diocese?”

  “Yes. The Hartford archdiocese. Considering she was Catholic, she may have gone to Catholic Social Services.”

  Hartford CSS. That was the little nudge he’d felt in his brain a while ago. Hartford was in central Connecticut. “Do you have a number for them, Miss Newcomb?”

  “Hold on and let me look.” She returned to the phone a few minutes later and rattled off a string of digits. “No one will be there today.”

  “I know. Thank you for your help,” Josh said. He disconnected the call and immediately dialed the number Jennifer had given him. To his surprise, it was picked up almost immediately.

  “Maxie, I told you, I need to get some work done,” a female voice said impatiently.

  “I’m sorry,” Josh said. “I must have the wrong number.”

  “No, no. Who were you trying to reach?”

  “Catholic Social Services.”

  “That’s me. I’m sorry, I thought you were my daughter. She’s been calling all morning. I’m Elaine Albright. Can I help you?” she said, belatedly turning more professional.

  “Yes.” Josh quickly explained who he was. “I didn’t expect to find someone in the office on Sunday.”

  “Paperwork.”

  “I understand that.”

  “I imagine you do. What can I help you with?”

  “I’m looking for information on a woman named Felicia Barr, from about twenty or so years ago. Her n
ame then would have been”—he glanced at the paper on which Felicia’s background information was typed, “O’Neill.”

  There was dead silence on the other end of the line. “What about her?” Elaine said cautiously.

  “I need to know if she had a child at that time.”

  “Most adoptions from then were closed.”

  Bingo, Josh thought. “Why would you think this is about an adoption, Mrs. Albright?”

  “Why else would you be calling us?”

  “Did she give up a child for adoption?”

  “I can’t give you that information.”

  Hot damn, he thought this time. “Do you know who can?”

  “You’d need a court order to unseal the records.”

  “Which jurisdiction?” Josh asked, scribbling notes.

  “Hartford County. I don’t think you’ll have any success.”

  There was such a thing as interagency cooperation, Josh thought, especially where murder was concerned. Maybe the Simsbury Police could run interference for them. “Mrs. Albright, this concerns a murder case,” he said, deciding to come clean in hopes of shocking her. “We need information.”

  “I can’t tell you anything.”

  “Mrs. Albright, there may be other lives at stake. We think this person has already killed twice.”

  “My God! You don’t think it’s—”

  “Felicia Barr’s child?” Josh said, when Elaine stopped abruptly. “It could be.”

  There was a long sigh. “Detective, I wish I could help you. I really do. But without a court order, my hands are tied.”

  “If I can get the court order…”

  “Call me back. I do want to help, Detective.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and hung up, staring into space. They couldn’t spare anyone to go to Connecticut for a court order, assuming they could find someone to issue one. He needed help.

  Josh dialed the Simsbury Police Department and soon was talking to a Detective Buehle. He explained the situation, including what he needed, and then listened to a silence not unlike Mrs. Albright’s.

  “You don’t ask for much, do you?” Detective Buehle said after a moment. “We’ve got our own problems.”

  How much crime could there be in a small Connecticut town? Josh wondered, and then chastised himself. After all, he worked in a small town with its share of problems. “This involves homicide,” he reminded the other detective.

  Buehle sighed heavily. “You won’t get a judge to sign a court order today. It’s Sunday.”

  “Anything you could do we’d appreciate.”

  “Who got killed, anyway?”

  There was no harm in giving out that information. “A local woman, plus a New Yorker named Felicia Barr. She came from your area—”

  “You don’t mean Felicia O’Neill, do you?”

  Josh’s heartbeat quickened. “Do you know her?”

  “Hell, I went to school with her. So she finally went and got herself killed?”

  Josh wondered why people kept saying that about her. “Was she really that bad?”

  “Around here? Nah. I dated her once or twice. But after she left we heard stories.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “When she was in college, twenty, twenty-five years ago. She did come back for a while a few years later, but no one saw much of her.”

  “Are her parents still alive?”

  “No, they both died some years back. She’s got no family around here now. Jeez, Felicia O’Neill.”

  “Did you see her when she came back?”

  “Nah, I never did run into her.”

  “I just thought, since you dated—”

  “In high school. You know, a few people did see her back here after she’d gone to Yale. She’d let herself go, I guess. Gotten fat.”

  “Fat.”

  “Yeah. Kind of surprising. She was always ahead of the styles. Even I knew that.”

  “Could she have been pregnant?”

  “I don’t know,” Buehle said, startled. “I don’t remember hearing she had a kid.”

  “Is there anyone you can ask?”

  “I don’t know. That was a long time ago, you know.” He paused. “You’re asking a lot of us, you know.”

  “I know, but it could break this thing for us.”

  “If we get the court order, you’ll have to come down for it.”

  “Yeah. Listen, any time we can help you, let me know.”

  “Yeah,” Buehle said skeptically, and hung up.

  Felicia had returned to her hometown, Josh thought. If Winston Barr was right about the age of her daughter, that would have been around the time she’d been pregnant. It was funny that she’d left Yale, where she likely didn’t want anyone to know what had happened to her, for a small town where everyone knew her, but she must have had her reasons. Maybe she didn’t want anyone there to know about the baby, either.

  Maybe she didn’t want the father to know. Josh sat up straighter. He was losing his edge. The father’s identity probably had little bearing on the investigation, but in homicide all bets were off. Finding his name would be difficult, if not impossible, now that Felicia was dead. There wasn’t even a guarantee that he’d been identified on any of the adoption papers. Damn weekends, anyway, and damn judges who likely wouldn’t issue court orders on a Sunday.

  “Any luck?” Charlie asked from behind him.

  Josh turned and quickly outlined what he’d found out. “We’ll have to wait for the court order before we know anything,” he concluded.

  “Can’t hang around here until that happens.” Charlie was pulling on his jacket. “Come on. We’ve got some suspects waiting for us.”

  Ari pulled her comforter tighter around her and groaned as her alarm went off. Usually on a Sunday she could sleep in, especially if Megan was with Ted. Today, though, she had to appear at the Welcome Inn with the other suspects. She had just enough time to shower and have breakfast before she headed out.

  It was a brilliant morning, as befitted the first day of May; sunny and warm, with a cloudless blue sky. If it had been like this yesterday, would things have happened the same way? The rain had provided a convenient screen for the murderer, and had destroyed alibis for other people. Whoever had killed Felicia had taken advantage of the weather. That made her resourceful as well as quick to action. It also made her dangerous. Last fall Ari had nearly been killed trying to catch a murderer. She had no intention of letting that happen again.

  She was just putting her cup and cereal bowl in the dishwasher when the phone rang. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered as she crossed to it. “Yes, Josh. I’ll be there,” she said into the receiver.

  There was a brief silence. “I’m sorry, Ari. I didn’t realize you were expecting a phone call.”

  Ari was glad that she didn’t have a video phone because she was certain her mother would see her blushing. “No, no. It’s just that I’ve got to get over to the Welcome Inn in a little while, and I thought…” She let her voice trail off. Why had she expected Josh to call her, anyway? Just because things looked promising between them, and just because she’d dreamed about him last night, didn’t mean that he was thinking about her as much as she was about him. After all, he had a murder to solve. Honestly, Ari, she chastised herself. This was so high school. The next thing she knew she’d be doodling “Mrs. Joshua Pierce” on everything.

  “And of course you’ll be careful,” Eileen said.

  “Yes, Mom,” Ari said, realizing two things at once. Her mother had apparently been talking for some time, and Ari had indeed scribbled Josh’s name several times on the notepad she kept by the phone. Quickly she tore off the top sheet and crumpled it. “I don’t think much will happen in a conference room.”

  “Thank heavens. I’d dread the thought of your returning to the fairgrounds. It’s such a dangerous place.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say that. I don’t know why Felicia was killed there, but I’m sure it had nothing to do with the festiv
al.”

  “What about poor Rosalia, then?”

  “Rosalia? What about her?”

  “Oh, Ari. Haven’t you heard? She fell into a bin filled with fleece and was smothered.”

  Ari’s first reaction was to laugh, it sounded so improbable. “You’re kidding.”

  “Do you mean to tell me you haven’t heard yet?”

  “No,” Ari said, realizing all at once that her mother was serious. She also knew, deep in her heart, that there was nothing accidental about Rosalia’s death. “When did it happen?”

  “Last night sometime. You didn’t see anything while you were there yesterday, did you?”

  “No, of course not.” If she had, she probably would still be at the fairgrounds. “How could it have happened?” she said, more to herself than to her mother. “We all left around the same time.”

  “Josh would know.”

  Ari’s memory flashed back to the page Josh had received. Had he found out then? No, there’d been no hint on his face to indicate that something serious had happened. And if there had, would he have mentioned going ballroom dancing, of all things?

  Eileen was still speaking, bringing Ari back from her reverie.

  “I have to go, Mom,” she said, interrupting Eileen midspurt. “I’ll find out more about what happened when I get to the motel.”

  “You will call me, won’t you? I do worry about you.”

  “Yes, Mom, I know.” After accepting Eileen’s offer to look after Megan if Ari didn’t get home in time, Ari hung up and headed for the shower, her mind buzzing. How in the world could Rosalia have been killed at the festival?

  When Ari reached the Welcome Inn, she found a group of people as confused and distressed as she was. “Did you hear?” Diane demanded as soon as Ari walked into the main conference room. “About Rosalia.”

  “Yes, my mother called me this morning.”

  “She was smothered in a bin of fleeces, Ari! How could that have happened?”

  “With everyone there? I don’t know. Will you let me hang up my sweater and get some coffee before you start interrogating me, though?”

  “I just thought that your policeman told you something last night.”

  Ari gave her a sharp look as she hung her sweater on a large clothes rack. “What do you mean?”