The Locket: From the Casebook of TJ Sweeney

by Susan Van Kirk

  She looked at the interview notes of the officers. Some were impossible to read. Evidently, they had interviewed ten patrons from the Roof Garden who had seen the Lattimore couple together there earlier in the evening. The sister-in-law and a brother were questioned, but they hadn’t seen Rose Lattimore after the Roof Garden, and they agreed that the couple appeared to be very happy celebrating their anniversary. Another Lattimore brother was overseas in the service. The following morning, officers interviewed Lattimore’s parents, who would have been Rose’s in-laws, but they could offer nothing that was helpful. Neighbors were also questioned, and the police notes indicated that the couple was happy, and they had no reason to believe James Lattimore would hurt his wife. No police reports indicated domestic calls to the house. The husband appeared genuinely bewildered and concerned. Of course, thought TJ, you never really know what goes on in a marriage.

  Reassembling the evidence, she looked back over the scant amount of paper, and decided the officers back in the forties figured Rose Lattimore had simply taken off. No evidence of foul play was ever found, and no other investigation had been done. Every follow-up review of the evidence was initialed with “no change.”

  TJ got on the police database and spent the rest of the morning searching for Lattimores. By noon, when she left for lunch, she had a name and address.

  Louise Alissa Lattimore Rollins would be seventy-three years old and, TJ figured, she’d have the same DNA as her mother. She could use Louise Rollins’s DNA to compare to the sample the coroner had taken from the bones. According to the police database, the Lattimore daughter was very much alive, a widow, and still lived in Endurance. Finally, TJ thought, we may have a way to identify Rose Lattimore.

  Next stop is 937 West Simmons Street.

  Chapter Eight

  Driving to Louise Rollins’s home, TJ believed she was finally making progress with this case. The sun had appeared, the wind had died down, and it was in the low fifties today, a fact not lost upon her sinuses. Her cold was much better, and she could even breathe through her nose, a wonderful experience after the past week. The Rollins house was in an older neighborhood on the southwest side of town, with lots of ranch houses built in the 1950s. Some were kept up well, while others displayed the ravages of time and lack of money or effort. She pulled up in front of 937 and saw, with satisfaction, that this was a house that was loved. The yard had been raked in preparation for the winter, and the shrubs and hosta were surrounded by leaves to protect them. On the brown siding of the front porch was a white mailbox with a Thanksgiving wreath hanging next to it. As TJ got out of her car, she noticed a movement of the curtains in the front window of the house. Louise Rollins was expecting her.

  That’s when it hit her. What was she going to say to this woman about a body that could possibly be her mother’s? It had been sixty-eight years since this five-year-old had waited for her mother to come home. How had that affected her life? Did Louise Rollins have children of her own? TJ took several deep breaths as she strode up the walk to the house. Finally, the detective was sure she would get answers to her questions and a DNA sample for comparison.

  The front door opened—Louise Rollins had definitely been expecting her arrival. A silver-haired woman stood in the doorway, and TJ knew she must be the child from the file, but it seemed weird to read about her at age five, and now see her at seventy-three. Louise Rollins was short, probably only five-foot-three, and she was dressed for company—a skirt, blouse, and matching sweater, and a gold necklace and earrings. The lady smiled and ushered the detective into her house, closing the door and introducing herself.

  “Please, Detective Sweeney, take a chair over here. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Sure, if it’s not too much trouble,” TJ said. She glanced around the cozy living room and noticed family pictures on an upright piano and on the fireplace mantle. The floors were hardwood with area rugs, and the furniture appeared slightly threadbare, but comfortable. A pile of recent mail lay on the coffee table, along with several stacks of magazines.

  Once they were seated and the coffee poured, Louise said, her voice barely concealing her excitement, “It’s my mother, isn’t it? You have somehow traced her. I knew this day would eventually come. People can’t just disappear off the face of the earth.” She looked expectantly at TJ’s face, examined it, and added in a quiet voice, “My mother’s dead, isn’t she? After all this time, she’d have to be. I always hoped she’d come home.” What began as hope ended as dismissal, and the woman lowered her eyes to her hands on her lap. “Well, that’s that. I want to know what happened.”

  “I’m afraid we may have found her, but we don’t know for sure,” TJ said, trying to soften the blow.

  “Why? Why do you think you’ve found her and where?”

  TJ pulled the locket out of the evidence bag and handed it to Louise. “Is this familiar? Have you seen it before?”

  She turned the locket over and over in her hand and slowly shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Open the cover on the side there,” said the detective, pointing.

  Louise opened the locket cover and read the inscription. She looked up at TJ, her expression sad. “I don’t remember this, but it was something my father might have done. He was a very romantic man. You know, my mother disappeared on their anniversary. Maybe he gave her this the night they went dancing.”

  TJ considered the pain in the woman’s eyes. Perhaps it would be wise to simply put it out there. “We have found a body, buried out in the green area where they are building Tolliver Park. This locket was found with it, along with a woman’s powder compact.”

  “Buried? But how? Why?” She looked down at the locket. “My mother had such a compact. I often saw her use it, and sometimes she would playfully powder my nose, too. Do you have it with you?”

  “Yes,” TJ said, and slipped the compact out of the evidence bag.

  Louise turned it over in her hands, staring at the tarnished silver, and TJ could actually hear her ragged breathing. Then she handed back the compact and said, “I don’t know. It’s been so long ago. Oh, I wish I could remember. I was only five, you know. I’m not sure this was the one. When she was young, her compact was shiny, and this has been in the ground for sixty-eight years if what you think is true.”

  “I understand. This is bringing up really difficult memories, but can you tell me about your family and what happened that night?”

  “I’ll do my best. I’m the only one left of the family, you know, except for Uncle Hugh, and he is just days away from death in the hospice across town. You might want to talk to him too. He can still talk to people.” She rose and walked over to an end table near the doorway, bringing back a sepia photograph—her parent’s wedding picture. “This is what they looked like back then. She was so beautiful.”

  TJ studied the photograph, carefully eyeing the twenty-somethings. Rose Lattimore was in a high-necked wedding dress with long sleeves and a veil made of netting. In her left arm was a huge bouquet of lilies, and her right hand was through James Lattimore’s arm, his hand over hers. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders, and her face was beautiful, with those high cheekbones that would have aged well. She appeared to be Caucasian. Lattimore wore one of those late 1930s suits with a long necktie and cufflinks below the sleeves of the jacket. He looked so happy his suit buttons might have popped off, and Rose appeared demure, but pleased.

  “They were a handsome couple,” TJ said, giving the framed picture back.

  “Oh, yes. When I look back at the photographs, I feel kind of guilty to think that she was much prettier than my real mother.”

  TJ’s breath stopped, her eyes widened, and she stared at Louise Rollins. “…Than your real mother?”

  “Yes. You didn’t think Rose was my mother did you? Rose was my stepmother. Oh, I’m sorry for the confusion. My mother died when I was born. Something about complications.”

  TJ could feel her hopes for a DNA match going straight
out the window. She had hoped to match the victim’s DNA with that of Louise Rollins. It was a few seconds before she heard Louise’s voice again.

  “—I was four when Daddy met Rose and five when he married her. She was everything I hoped for in a stepmother—kind, caring, loving, and she hugged me all the time and told me she loved me. I’ve always called Rose ‘mother’ because I never knew my real mother. I’ve only seen pictures. My real mother had been gone for four years when Daddy and Rose began to date. I loved her immediately, and that’s why I know she would never have left of her own accord. Rose loved us both too much.”

  “Can you tell me anything else about Rose? Where she came from? Did you meet her family at the wedding? Did she have friends in town? How did your father meet her?”

  Louise stared past TJ and sighed deeply. “A lot of questions. I’m not sure I know all the answers. I do know, however, that Daddy met her at the Roof Garden one night. She came to Endurance to go to school at Cass Business College. When Daddy met her, Rose worked for an attorney downtown as his legal secretary. My father, James Lattimore, was an accountant at Blaine’s Department Store. After my real mother died, he stayed home most evenings with me, until Uncle Hugh convinced him to go to the Roof Garden, and that night he met Rose.”

  “I imagine that was a difficult time for both of you.”

  She nodded her head. “Oh, yes. Daddy hired a kind, elderly lady named Nora to stay with me, and when I turned six I went to school. But I remember his despair. He wasn’t smiling anymore, and he was preoccupied. Before I went to bed, he’d listen to me read a book—I was an early reader—and he’d kind of go off into some other place. After he met Rose, he had a spring in his step again. He laughed and was the funny father I remembered. They didn’t date long. In fact, I think it was only three months later that they got married. October 2, 1942. I remember Rose’s mother attended the wedding from somewhere down south, but her father didn’t. Those were difficult times, and travel was expensive. Jobs were hard to find, so once you had one, you couldn’t exactly take time off. I remember Daddy explained that.”

  That would make sense, TJ thought. She might use that lie, especially if her father was African American. “No one else from her family came to the wedding?”

  “I was only five. It’s not like I would remember. I know she had several girlfriends she had met when she went to the business college, but I don’t recall anyone else. Of course, when Rose and Daddy married, she quit her job and stayed home with me. Daddy told me mothers had to do that back then.” Louise paused a moment. “Sometimes I can still remember the perfume she wore—Joy by Jean Patou. The night she disappeared I tried to stay awake to see her and Daddy when they came home. But I fell asleep. For a long time, I thought if I hadn’t fallen asleep, perhaps she wouldn’t have disappeared. Silly, wasn’t I?”

  TJ took another sip of coffee and set her cup down on the coffee table. “I’m sure that was a natural reaction for a five-year-old. Tell me about your father, Louise.”

  She smiled and looked directly at TJ. “He was the best. As I got older, I remembered things I hadn’t back when I was young, and, of course, he talked to me more like an adult as time went by. I know after Rose disappeared—we always said that instead of ‘left’—he was devastated. Many, many nights I could hear muffled sobs through the bedroom walls, and that scared me because he was an adult, and I depended on him, and he was terribly sad. As time went by, we both got used to the fact that she was gone, and to talk about it only made him unhappy. He hired a detective to try to find her. Occasionally, a promising clue would emerge, only to die again. He never believed Rose would leave us, and he never remarried. Mostly, he was bewildered, wondering if he had done something wrong. But they didn’t argue and hadn’t argued that night when she…disappeared.”

  “And your father—I assume he’s passed away.”

  “Gracious, yes. He died of cancer when he was only sixty. He fought it for two years, but eventually he just gave up. I think he really died of a broken heart. He told me before his death that he’d see my real mother again. Even then, he didn’t think Rose was dead.”

  “And the rest of the family?”

  “My husband died ten years ago, and we have two grown children who now live in Kansas. Harry, of course, Daddy’s older brother, died in the war. He was a pilot, and was shot down over Germany. As I said before, his brother Hugh is in hospice care. Uncle Hugh and my father were twins, actually. They were very close. Now, of course, I visit him each day because I’m all he has left. His children are out in the Southwest, and his wife—my Aunt Helen—died seven years ago. Since it won’t be much longer, his children will be coming back soon. You should go speak to him, too. I guess, Detective Sweeney, that’s what happens when you get old. Everyone dies, and you’re left without anyone with whom you share that history. The longer you live, the more that happens until you’re the only one who remembers.” Her voice trailed off into a whisper.

  TJ felt uncomfortable, and couldn’t think of anything to say. What a tragedy for a whole family, and especially this woman who was only a little girl. Finally, she said, “Perhaps you will move closer to your children eventually. I know people often do that.” She looked around, stood up, and figured it was about time to go. This was a dead end for now.

  “I do have one or two items I packed away that remind me of my stepmother.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. If you think they would be of any help?”

  “Possibly. What do you have?”

  “Some legal papers, like her social security number and marriage license, a few bills, and a card Rose gave me for my fifth birthday. We had a party in September, and, of course, the next month she was gone.”

  TJ began to feel her heart pump again as an idea occurred to her. “The birthday card. Would it be in an envelope?”

  “I think so. Just a minute. Let me get them for you.”

  Ten minutes later, TJ drove to Woodbury to see Atkins again with an envelope whose glue might have been licked by a missing woman. The card had been out of the air and in a trunk for years. It would be a real long shot. How much, if any, DNA might be on that slender envelope edge?

  And if it matched the DNA Atkins extracted from her bones, they’d know for certain she was Rose Lattimore, she thought. Then she decided to interview Hugh Lattimore. TJ didn’t know how much he might remember, but it was worth a shot.

  Chapter Nine

  TJ had never been in a hospice before, but she thought And Give You Peace Hospice simply resembled other religious buildings. It was run by Catholic Charities in the name of St. Vincent de Paul, patron saint of charitable societies, and a large cross dominated the corner of the brick wall farthest from the front door. She parked her car and sat, slumped in her seat, and contemplated her reluctance. Death. She saw it in her job, sometimes violently, but most often peacefully. Any time an unattended death occurred, TJ and Ron Martinez, or another detective named Jake Williams, had to check it out. Why did she feel anxious? Her own family had generally died in their beds: her grandparents, an aunt and uncle, and a couple of cousins all went peacefully. One uncle had died terribly ill but not nearby, and another uncle had died in Vietnam. Otherwise, the deaths that happened as generations of her family aged had followed the natural order of things. Her irresponsible and absent father, of course, was alive somewhere, and her mama lived here in town under her watchful eye.

  TJ glanced at the dashboard clock. She decided it was the idea that she was going into a place where people expected to come out in a hearse. Even the man TJ came to see, Hugh Lattimore, did not have much time left, according to all reports. Well, she had to see him about his family, so she’d stick to that and try not to think about his imminent departure. She had sat here now for ten minutes. Time to go.

  After asking directions to his room, TJ walked down quiet corridors that were remarkably filled with light. This wasn’t a dark place, like she’d envisioned. When the detective reached Hugh La
ttimore’s room, she found the door ajar, but no one was inside. The main room had a bed at the side with a light over the headboard and a small chest of drawers next to it. All of the colors of the bedspread and the furniture were a tranquil blue in varying shades. A deep blue tapestry hung on the far wall, matching the bedspread. TJ decided the decorator meant to convey a peaceful space.

  The entire wall of the room across from the bed was filled with huge windows that looked out on a forest. On a sunny June day it would have been spectacular, but today was a gray November Monday. TJ walked over and looked out the window, noticing the maple trees and a couple of birches, their last leaves still clinging to branches.

  In the stillness, TJ heard the sound of whirring coming down the hall, and she turned toward the door. Through the doorway came a wheelchair with a frail man covered in blankets. He had an aide with him.

  “Were you waiting to see Mr. Lattimore?” she asked.

  “Yes, I need to ask him a few questions. I’m from the police department.” She held up her identification.

  The aide let out a deep breath. “Mr. Lattimore is able to answer questions, but don’t stay long. He needs to rest. If you could go out in the hallway a moment, I’ll get him settled in.”

  While she waited, TJ leaned against the wall and thought of the photo she had seen of the three Lattimore brothers at Louise Rollins’s house. Hugh Lattimore was, by far, the largest of the three, very tall and bulky. He was not overweight, just a large man. Now, from what she had glimpsed, he was tiny and frail, with a small head and white hair over and behind ears that bordered a wrinkled forehead and face. The aide came back out and told TJ she could go in, but, “Mr. Lattimore is quite tired, so please don’t agitate him.”

  Walking back into the room, she saw a fragile man, and immediately heard his labored breathing. He had an oxygen tube in his nose, and above it, small, beady eyes that settled dispassionately on TJ. His left hand clutched the edge of the blanket nearest his chin, and it contained an IV with tape all around it. He was attached to a machine that kept up a steady, but quiet, signal.