“What?”
“That,” said Liz, pointing to the framed poster on the wall above the sideboard. “Except that Mom had an actual photograph, not a movie poster and I have no idea where she got that either.”
Kate got up and went to take a closer look at the poster. It was for a movie from the thirties.
“Why do you suppose my mother would want to give you her necklace?” asked Liz.
“I don’t know,” said Kate. Without appearing to seem too anxious, she looked at her watch and got up to leave. “I’m really sorry, Liz. I didn’t mean to stay so long.”
Liz smiled at her shyly. “I’m actually really glad you came.”
“So am I,” Kate told her sincerely. “I’ll see you in the office on Monday morning.”
Liz nodded before asking, “What’s going to happen to the necklace?”
Kate chose her words carefully. “We’ll have to give it to the police, I suppose.”
“They’ll probably start asking questions about the necklace.”
No more than I’m starting to ask myself, thought Kate as she tiredly made her way to her car. None of this made sense. How had Liz’s mother ended up with her dead daughter’s necklace?
***
Kate pulled into the parking lot of Woodland Hills Lodge a little after six o’clock. In the almost forty years since she’d last been here, several new buildings had been added to the original one. The once heavily-wooded grounds were now beautifully manicured and spotlessly maintained. Taking a deep breath, she got out of her car and checked the directory in the well-appointed lobby. Dr. MacGuyver’s office was located in this building, in the Levitt Wing. After walking through a maze of corridors that all looked the same, she found her way to Suite 107. Opening the door, she went to the reception desk.
“Hello,” she told the receptionist. “I’m Kate Stanton. I have an appointment with Dr. MacGuyver at six fifteen.”
“Dr. MacGuyver is expecting you, Mrs. Stanton,” she told Kate. “You may go right in.”
Kate had been pleasantly surprised to find that one of her daughter’s doctors was now the head administrator at Woodland Hills. He had been a regular fixture in Sonja’s life and Kate had admired his dedication to her daughter’s care. However, the man who now greeted her was no longer young and bore testament to the passage of time. The slim build had been replaced with a slight paunch and the full head of hair was now bald, although he sported a neatly-trimmed beard.
“Hello, Dr. MacGuyver.”
“Mrs. Stanton, so nice to see you after all these years,” he greeted her warmly, “although I must admit the name didn’t ring a bell until you mentioned your daughter’s name.” He sobered instantly. “Such a tragedy, indeed.”
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” Kate told him, making herself comfortable in the chair facing his desk.
“How can I help you?”
Kate opened her purse and took out the necklace which she had switched from the plastic bag to a small box. She handed it to him for closer inspection. “When my daughter was admitted to Woodland Hills, she had an old teddy bear with her, her favorite, and this necklace which had belonged to my sister.” When he handed the necklace back to her, she opened the clasp on the middle coin, revealing the locket inside with Sonja’s picture. “A little over two months ago, a homeless woman was struck and killed by a car. You may have heard about it on the news. Anyway, the woman had this necklace on her person right before she was killed.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, perplexed.
“Absolutely sure,” she confirmed before continuing. “I’ve recently learned from the woman’s daughter that her mother had also been a patient here.” Kate’s hand shook so she placed it in her lap before forging ahead. “I need to find out how this woman came to have my daughter’s necklace, especially since I had been told that everything belonging to my daughter had been destroyed by the explosion.”
“This must have been very upsetting for you,” he said not unkindly.
“More than you know.” Kate gave him a tired shrug. “If you remember, I ended up marrying Marcus, the wonderful man who used to come with me to visit Sonja. Several years after we married, we were blessed with another daughter. I never told her about Sonja since it would have meant bringing up a part of my past that was very painful.”
“What happened to your daughter was a tragedy,” Dr. MacGuyver told her gravely, “but I’m afraid I’m not sure how I can help you now.”
“I need for you to check whether this woman, Maria Weaver, was at Woodland Hills around the time my daughter was here. They would have been roughly the same age,” she told him quickly. “Apparently, Maria Weaver was raped when she was fifteen and then sent to a private sanitarium up in San Francisco.”
The doctor scribbled some notes on his pad while she spoke. “If this Maria Weaver was a patient at Woodland Hills Lodge, we should have record of it.” He cleared his throat before continuing. “However, we only started imputing data into our computer system in 1991, so the records of patients prior to that date would be archived at our head office in Sacramento. I’ll have to order up those files.”
“How long will that take?” asked Kate worriedly.
“About a week or so,” he told her. “Once they’re found, I can have them sent down by courier.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Stanton. I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Thank you.” Kate stood up, shaking his hand. “I’d like to get this matter straightened out before I give the necklace to the police.”
“The police?” he asked quickly.
“Of course,” she told him briskly. “This necklace is part of a murder investigation.”
***
Visiting hours were almost over when Irving Johnson opened the door of his mother’s room. She was hunched over in her chair, fast asleep. Her chin was resting on her chest and her breathing was labored.
“Hello, Mother,” he told her quietly.
Startled, Sigi’s eyes flew open. “What are you doing here?”
Before he could reply, her body was racked by a fit of coughing so severe, the book in her lap fell to the floor. Irving reached down and picked it up, placing it on the small table beside her chair. He waited until her coughing subsided before speaking again.
“Your cough has gotten worse. I’ll see if the doctor can give you something for it.”
“Don’t bother because I already tried. He said there’s nothing more he can give me,” she replied tiredly.
Irving gestured towards the washroom door. “Where’s Dickie?” He hated that name. It was so undignified, especially for an old man.
“He went for a walk.” She adjusted the tube that fed the oxygen through her nose. “Did you talk to your brother? Is he going to come?”
He ignored her question for the moment. “Maria’s dead, Mother.” He wasn’t sure whether she had heard him so he quickly added, “Leo killed her.”
“No!” Her voice was barely audible. “He had no right to kill her.”
“There’s more,” he told her grimly. “I got a call from MacGuyver over at Woodland Hills.”
“What did he want?” she asked sharply.
“He got a visit from Kate Stanton today.” He watched her face closely. “It seems that when Leo killed Maria, she had a necklace on her that she was probably going to give to Kate Stanton.” He towered above her. “The same necklace we told you to get rid of a long time ago.”
She got up and tried to take his arm but he shrugged it off. “I couldn’t destroy it.”
“Well, thanks to your obstinacy we’ve got one helluva problem on our hands.”
“Do you think Kate suspects something?”
“She’s getting MacGuyver to check the Lodge’s records to see if Maria Weaver was a patient at the same time as her daughter.” He sat on his mother’s bed. “At least he had the presence of mind to stall her for a week.”
“You tell tha
t doctor to deal with the situation,” she snapped suddenly. “Give him more money if you have to.”
He stared at his mother in frustration. “Somehow, I don’t think that all the money in the world is going to make this problem go away, Mother.”
“What are you going to do?” Sigi asked, seeing the determined set of her son’s jaw.
“I’m going to try and fix the problem myself.” He turned to leave.
“There’s something you need to know, Irving.” She launched into another fit of coughing before collapsing in her chair once again.
“What, Mother?”
“Maria was your daughter.”
He swallowed hard. “What are you talking about?”
“Karl got a vasectomy after his first affair. I made sure of it.” She eyed her son contemptuously. “So there’s no way he could have been Maria’s father.”
His eyes were flat and lifeless as he stared at the stranger who was his mother. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because Maria’s dead,” she told him quietly, “and I wanted to hurt you as much as you just hurt me.”
Irving opened the door and left, oblivious to the tears coursing down his mother’s cheeks.
CHAPTER 34
Someone was pounding on his front door and his heart automatically clutched in fear. His housekeeper had the day off and there was no one to answer the door. His first instinct was to hide yet he remained rooted to the spot. As the minutes wore on, the pounding became more insistent.
“I know you’re home,” his brother yelled from the other side of the door. “Now open up!”
Stifling an oath, Leo went and answered the door. “I don’t remember inviting you to my home.”
“Is that what you call this dump?” Irving walked in uninvited, looking around the messy living room in disdain before giving his brother’s disheveled appearance the same once over. “What’s wrong with you? Is the old guilt setting in?”
“Why don’t you get the hell out of my house,” he snarled.
Irving decided to get straight to the point. “We’ve got a problem.”
Leo closed his front door and went over to the bar to fix himself a drink. “I’m not interested in your problem.”
“It seems that Mother never disposed of Maria’s necklace.”
“So?” He feigned nonchalance as he sat down on the sofa, nursing his drink broodingly.
Irving walked over to the bar and helped himself to the bottle of scotch. He gave his brother a measured look before continuing. “Kate Stanton found out about the necklace and is breathing down MacGuyver’s neck, looking for answers.” He took a healthy slug of the scotch, feeling it burn all the way down to the pit of his stomach. “Apparently, Maria was trying to put the necklace in Kate Stanton’s mailbox when you ran her down.”
“How was I supposed to know she had the necklace?” he cried, jumping up from the sofa. “It was Mother who should’ve gotten rid of it when we told her to, so don’t go blaming that on me.”
“Jesus, Leo!” Irving finally gave vent to his fury. “Why did you have to go and kill her? You should’ve just left things the way they were!”
The weight of his guilt overtook him and he hung his head. “I couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“It was too risky.”
“What are you talking about?” Irving’s voice was sharp.
“She showed up at my door with mother’s old photo a few weeks before I took care of her,” he told Irving, his voice a little more than a whisper. “What if MacGuyver and the other doctors were wrong? What if she was smarter than everybody gave her credit for?”
“That’s ridiculous,” his brother sputtered, “and besides, she couldn’t have known where you lived unless—” he broke off in mid-sentence as realization dawned on him “—unless she’d been here before.” His brother’s miserable silence confirmed his worst fear. “You sorry son-of-a-bitch! You brought her here?”
“You and Mother abandoned her,” he pointed out bitterly.
“We had no choice,” his brother replied heatedly. “We never expected your daughter to find out about her. Our backs were to the wall.”
Leo’s eyes blazed. “Well, I loved her.”
“You sick freak, you should’ve kept your hands off of her and then we wouldn’t be in this mess!”
“Interesting how you never took your own advice where my wife was concerned.”
“Keep Livy out of this.”
“Tell me one thing, Irving.”
“What’s that?”
“Why get rid of my baby?”
For the longest time, his brother didn’t answer. When he finally did, it was as if the words were torn from him. “That baby would’ve carried some of the same malignant DNA as your father. I couldn’t risk it.”
Leo stared at him, dumbfounded. “What are you talking about?”
“What if it would’ve turned out to be another freak?”
His laugh was bitter. “You mean like me?” His brother didn’t respond but that didn’t stop Leo. “And you think your hands are clean just because he wasn’t your biological father?” He found himself losing control as he poked a finger at his older brother’s chest. “Well, I have news for you. Your hands are just as bloody as mine.”
Irving rubbed his forehead wearily. “I’ve thought about this from every angle and there’s only one way to handle this situation before it gets out of hand. You’re going to have to get rid of her.”
Leo looked up sharply. “Who?”
“Kate Stanton.”
“No.” Leo shook his head. “I can’t.”
“We have no choice in the matter,” Irving insisted coldly. “The woman knows she’s onto something and she’s threatening to take the necklace to the cops. How long do you think it’ll take for them to piece everything together?” He shook his head. “It’s just too risky.”
“Hire someone to do it.”
“Are you crazy?” his brother cried. “You got us into this mess; it’s up to you to get us out of it.”
“The girl is a bigger threat,” Leo announced.
“Which girl?”
“Maria’s daughter.”
There was a cold glint in Irving’s eyes. “Don’t you mean your daughter?”
Leo said nothing.
Irving set down his glass and went to the front door. Putting his hand on the doorknob, he paused. “By the way, I told Mother you killed Maria.” He turned and looked at his brother. “Do you know what her response was?” When Leo didn’t reply, he forged ahead ruthlessly. “She told me she wished you had died instead.”
It seemed as if the whole thing had blown up in his face in a matter of days. He hadn’t wanted there to be any physical evidence of him having had sex with the girl so condoms were out of the question. That left the old fashioned method of withdrawal. It took almost a Herculean effort for him not to come inside of her. Unfortunately, his timing was off twice. The first time he had been lucky and vowed to be more careful. The second time, his luck ran out. Two months later, he found out Maria was pregnant which ironically coincided with his wife’s announcement that they, too, were expecting.
His mother had gone ballistic when she learned that Maria was pregnant and ordered an immediate investigation. Every employee was interrogated, from the cleaning staff to the male nurses who looked after her to her doctors. The interviews yielded one common denominator – Leo. When confronted, he didn’t try to deny it, even when Sigi became hysterical, something his mother normally never did.
“How could you have done something so utterly disgusting to that innocent child!” she cried, opening another pack of cigarettes and withdrawing one. It was her third pack of the day and it was only noon.
He said nothing in his defense. What was there to say?
“You’re lucky I managed to convince them not to call the police,” she continued heatedly.
“They wouldn’t have called the police and you know it,” he retorted.
“They would have had too much to explain.”
“You could at least have the decency to feel ashamed.” She took a deep drag, before blowing out the smoke in a steady stream.
“A fine bloody mess this is,” his brother spat at him.
“I think you and Father deserve the credit for that, don’t you?” he challenged him. “Mother and I merely perpetuated the problem.”
“Keep your father out of this,” his mother told him flatly. “I don’t want his name mentioned in my presence.”
“Let’s think about this rationally,” his brother suggested. “We’ll have to find a doctor who’ll perform the abortion.”
“It’s not that simple,” his mother told him. “Maria’s got a rare blood disorder. The bleeding from an abortion could kill her.”
“Jesus!”
“I’ll take care of this,” Leo promised.
“I’d say you’ve already done enough.” The look his brother gave him was venomous.
“That’s enough, you two.” She began pacing the room. “I’ve found a place for her in San Francisco. It’s very discreet and they guarantee complete privacy. She’ll go there after she has the baby.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Irving seemed skeptical. “What if someone talks?”
“It’ll be taken care of.”
“I still don’t like it.”
“Have you got a better idea?” Sigi challenged her oldest son.
Irving shook his head. “I suppose not.”
Leo tried again. “Let me take care of everything.”
“You’ll deal with nothing.” His mother came and stood directly in front of him, her eyes cold and distant. “After today, I don’t ever want to see you again nor do I want you going anywhere near that child, do you understand?”
There was nothing left to say. He stood up and left.
Two months later, his wife moved in with his brother and his brother managed to talk her into aborting his baby. The loss of his wife had been a bitter pill to swallow but life without Maria was devastating. Her absence from his life was like a gnawing ache in the pit of Leo’s stomach. He never once asked whether Maria had the baby or what had happened to it. Leo didn’t care. All he cared about was Maria. He drove up to San Francisco with the crazy notion that he would defy his mother’s orders but, in the end, Leo changed his mind.
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