by Elaine Macko
Annie read the list, nodding and saying oui over and over. “Mon Dieu! We did it. Now what?”
“Now I need to call Shirley.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
As soon as the laundry was done, Annie and I headed to Stamford. Shirley had managed to get me the address I needed, but it wasn’t noon yet, and I thought our best bet would be to catch her at lunch.
We found a grocery store and Annie stocked up on treats for her daughter.
“This is all you want, Pop Tarts and macaroni and cheese?” a mystified checkout girl asked.
“It’s a gift.”
The girl pressed her lips together. “Okay, but there’s a mall down the street. You could probably find something really nice there.”
Annie explained her odd choice of purchases.
“Wow! That’s really cool that your daughter likes this stuff too. I love macaroni and cheese. I’m a student so I eat a lot of it.”
Annie paid for her things and thanked the young woman.
We got back in the car and headed to our destination and found a parking garage next door. It took a while for us to find a vacant slot that wasn’t reserved for an employee, and ended up a few floors below ground. Once in the building, we made our way to a bank of elevators and got off on the sixth floor. I walked up to the reception counter and waited for the man behind the desk to finish helping someone else.
“Good afternoon, I’d like to see Rhoda Newman.”
“Sorry, you just missed her.”
I looked at Annie and sighed. “Great. Now what?”
“She went to lunch. You could wait, but she usually just goes downstairs. There’s a cafeteria on the first floor,” the receptionist explained.
I smiled at the man. “Thank you. We’ll head back down there.”
We found the cafeteria and looked around. There was a long line of people winding their way through the display of lunch choices, but I didn’t see Rhoda. Neither Annie nor I was hungry so we moved away from the food area and walked into a large dining hall. I scanned the tables to the left, while Annie looked right.
“There she is,” Annie said.
Rhoda Newman was eating a salad. She had a book opened and no one else was at her table. We made our way through the crowded room.
“Rhoda? Hi, it’s Alex Harris.”
Rhoda closed her book. “Oh, hello. What are you doing here? How did you know where I worked?”
“I have a friend who’s been helping me and she’s a private investigator. She was able to find your place of employment for us.”
Rhoda shook her head. “That’s frightening.”
I felt like a stalker.
“It is, and I’m sorry to bother you at work. We’ll just take a minute, but I had a couple more questions.”
“Does this mean you know who killed Mr. Spiegel? Does it have anything to do with—” she took a deep breath. “Does it have something to do with Erika?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet, but we’re getting closer to finding the answer.” I couldn’t tell this woman, not here in a public place, that I was pretty sure I knew who killed Mr. Spiegel, and I was equally certain that that person had switched their child with Rhoda’s.
“Do you feel up to answering just a few more things?” I asked.
“If you promise me that as soon as you know for sure, you’ll let me know.”
Annie and I both nodded.
“Okay, what do you need to know?”
“Did you speak with any of the other mothers while you were in the hospital?”
Rhoda wiped a bit of salad dressing from her lips and indicated that we should take a seat. Annie sat down across from Rhoda while I asked a woman at another table if I could use her extra seat.
“We all had private rooms and for the first day or two, I was sick and slept most of the time.”
“But after that?” Annie prodded.
“No, as soon as I was up to it, Ira took us home.”
I could feel my entire theory falling apart. I was positive that Rhoda and the killer had talked at some time. Even if they hadn’t, the switch could have been made by pure luck, but I didn’t think so. And then Rhoda said something else.
“When I arrived I talked with a couple of others who came in around the same time as I did. You had to fill out all sorts of forms. Ira parked in front of the hospital so I wouldn’t have to walk, and after he got me inside, he ran off to move the car. I was young and really nervous and I didn’t have anyone with me besides Ira.”
“So you talked with these people?”
“Yes. One of the other mothers and I were both in a lot of pain and just sitting there waiting to be taken upstairs. She started talking and I think it was more just to forget about what was going to happen. Having a baby is a scary thing.”
“What did you tell her? Do you remember anything that you said or anything that she asked?”
“My name. I remember introducing myself. I told her my husband was just parking the car and he would be right back. She asked me if I had family to help me with the baby afterward and I said no, it was just Ira and me. I remember she said she was having a girl and I told her I didn’t know what I was having, but I felt it was a girl, too. No special reason, I just had a feeling my baby was a girl. I told her I already had the name picked out. She was older than me and it was nice to have someone to put me at ease. Another woman came in about that time. She too was older and she patted my hand and told me everything would be okay. It would have been nice to have my parents there.” Rhoda got a faraway look in her eyes and then a tear crept down her face.
“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. I’ve upset you,” I said, feeling like a heel. What was wrong with me bothering this woman at work and bringing up all her pain again?
“No. It’s okay. Since you came to see me, I’ve been feeling, well, hopeful. I know nothing is going to bring Erika back, but something is happening. All these years I’ve been beating myself up about everything, and now, I don’t know how to explain it, but I want to know the truth. I’ve made an appointment with a counselor and I go to see her next week. After all this time, I’m starting to think I might actually see the sun again. I’ll never stop missing Erika, but I’m tired of not being happy. So in a strange way, your snooping into Mr. Spiegel’s murder was bashert.”
“Bashert?”
“It was meant to be. You started me thinking about things.”
Rhoda was essentially letting me off the hook for dredging up her pain, but if it meant that the woman might be able to emerge from the cloud she had been living under and perhaps find some happiness in the future, then maybe something good did come out of this horrible mess.
“I remembered something after you came to see me at my house. I have no idea if it has anything at all to do with any of this, but, well, about a year and a half after Erika died, I found an envelope with money in it shoved into my mailbox. There was a note. All it said was, ‘I’m sorry.’ I thought it was from Ira. I never said anything to him about it, because quite frankly, it made me mad that he thought giving me money would make me feel better. I gave away all of it to a charity that works with childhood diseases.”
I had no idea what the money meant, if anything, in terms of why Mr. Spiegel was killed, and Ira was gone so I couldn’t ask him. But I did have one more question.
“Just one more thing and I’ll let you get back to your lunch. Do you remember the name of the woman you spoke to?”
“Oh yes. Not the one who came in later, but the first one, yes. She was just so comforting.”
And then she told us.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
“OMG. Is that how you say it?” Annie asked. “Alex, I am shaking. You were right. That was the last piece of the puzzle and Rhoda just confirmed your theory. What are we going to do? Should I call Gerard?”
I drove my little car back to Indian Cove, probably faster than I should have. I was shaking too. If my suspicions were right, this whole t
hing was premeditated along with a dose of good luck that Rhoda’s baby turned out to be a girl.
“There is no killing the suspicion that deceit has once begotten.”
“What?” Annie turned in her seat and looked at me.
“What Mr. Spiegel said. Remember what Jerome Perry told us he overhead at the office in North Carolina? It all fits. Once Mr. Spiegel knew they had the wrong baby, he knew exactly what happened. He just didn’t know who his daughter had been switched with. But he knew why. His brother said that Sheldon was an honorable man and that’s why he was relentless. That’s why he didn’t care if he was hurting his family. He was hell bent on righting a wrong.”
“Alex, if you are right, then why did Mr. Spiegel keep bothering the Jamisons. Why did he go there on Tuesday begging Shelley to convince her daughter to take a blood test?”
“Because of her looks. Christine looks so much like Jackie that as soon as he saw her the previous Friday, he was convinced he had found his real daughter, but then he stopped at Rhoda’s on the night before he was killed and then he knew for certain. But he still couldn’t get the striking resemblance Christine had with Jackie out of his head.”
“So he didn’t want to prove Christine was his daughter, he wanted to prove she wasn’t.” Annie nodded her head and smiled, exposing her straight teeth highlighted by her pale pink lip gloss.
“Exactly. He was just covering all his bases. If he could get Christine to do that, then he could go back to Rhoda and explain everything.”
“And then what? Would he not have been arrested? Would Rhoda be able to sue?”
“Oh, yes, it’s going to be a mess. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know about statutes of limitation on things like this, but there most definitely will be a lawsuit.” I thought about this for a couple of miles. “Or maybe not. Maybe Rhoda will be happy knowing the truth and getting on with her life after all this time.”
Annie sniffled and I looked over at her. Two tears slid down her left cheek.
“Alex, this is all so heartbreaking. That little girl was going to die no matter what, but because of the switch another family’s entire life was ruined for nothing. Ira Newman literally drank himself to death over the grief. How can someone do something like that to another person?”
“Remember what I said at the very beginning? Some people kill to get justice and—”
“And some are just evil.” Annie finished my thought. “I wanted to know if we would be meeting the wronged person or the evil one.”
“And what do you think now?”
“I think we are meeting the evil person. Gerard has been doing this job of finding killers since I married him. I should not be surprised at this, but I am.”
“Me, too,” I said. “And that’s probably a good thing. I don’t think I ever want to be in a place where evil is the norm, and the horrendous things people inflict on others is just commonplace.”
Annie and I continued the rest of the drive in silence until we reached our destination.
“We’re here. Do you want to come in or stay in the car?” I could see how much this had upset Annie.
“Oh, no. I want—no, I need—to hear what she has to say for herself. And then we will call John and Gerard and let the justice system punish her.”
“Okay. Let’s go.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
I knocked on the door and waited. Nothing. I knocked again, this time harder. I put my ear to the door, but didn’t hear any sounds.
Annie crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Now what?”
I stood there a couple of seconds thinking. “Come on. I know where she is.”
The rain had stopped over an hour ago, but dark clouds still lingered out over the Sound. We walked through the restaurant and out onto an empty terrace. Jackie Spiegel sat with her back to us, facing the Sound, a bulky sweater wrapped tightly around her shoulders.
Annie and I walked over to her and stood next to her chair, the three of us looking out toward the cold, gray waters of Long Island Sound. Jackie stood up and looked into my eyes.
“So. You figured it all out. Nosy and smart. It’s cold out here, let’s go inside.”
We followed her into the restaurant and the three of us sat at a table by a large bay window looking on the terrace. Jackie signaled to a waiter.
“Three teas and some of those lovely little cakes with the raspberries and cream. Thank you. So,” Jackie said to me when the waiter walked away, “what gave me away?”
“It was my husband, actually. He has a hard time throwing anything out.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Annie and I were doing a bit of cleanup around the house this morning, and I found a bunch of newspapers that I just hadn’t found the time to look at.”
“There was a very interesting article about a cruise ship in Dubrovnik,” Annie said, taking up the narrative. “Many people became sick because of an outbreak of food poisoning. It caused much trouble.”
“Yes, I know. I believe I told you about this. My friend Lorraine was stuck in the port. Take my advice, stay away from cruises.” Jackie tapped her finger several times on the table.
The waiter brought our order and despite the seriousness of the conversation we were having, the cakes looked fabulous and I put my finger in the cream while letting Annie take the lead.
“Yes, Mrs. Spiegel, you did mention to Alex and me that your friend was having a less than satisfactory vacation. And we have taken your advice on cruises to heart. But what you did not clarify for us at the time were the exact dates of Lorraine’s unfortunate luck. Lorraine was stuck in that port when I believe the two of you were supposed to be on your retreat at the coast, no? She was not there almost a week later as you led us to believe. So if Lorraine was in Dubrovnik at the time your husband was in Connecticut trying to right a horrendously heartbreaking wrong, then where were you all that time?” Annie’s voice caught and her eyes glistened with tears.
I dabbed some cream from my mouth and turned to Jackie. “You and Lorraine probably did check in at the resort, but then after a day or two she needed to leave to get to Dubrovnik to board her ship and you, what? Flew to Connecticut? Drove? Caught a train? Horseback? How did you get here, Jackie?” My voice had gone up an octave. The thought of little Erika and the permanent sadness in the eyes of Rhoda Newman were very difficult to set aside at the moment. I was mad and I really did not know how the police could deal with this stuff all the time.
“Sheldon would not listen. The man just would not leave well enough alone. What was I supposed to do? You tell me that.” The tapping of the nail again. “How was I going to change anything? What was done was done. So I drove up here and I bought one of those throw-away phones and called him. I told him I lost my phone and bought a temporary one until we could find a new plan. I asked him to meet with me so we could talk everything out. I asked him to meet me at the beach like we used to do.”
“Did you plan to kill him all along?” I asked.
Jackie shrugged. “I had a gun. I hoped I could reason with him, make him see that there was nothing to be gained by pursuing this any further. Our whole life, everything we worked for would go down the drain. But he was a putz. Did I tell you that? He said Mrs. Newman had a right to know the truth. I drove up here and arranged to meet him on Tuesday night. I told him not to mention it to anyone because I didn’t want to get Andrea’s hopes up that we were working things out.”
“You gave her money, didn’t you?” Annie said. “You gave Mrs. Newman money.”
Jackie sucked in her breath and crossed her arms. “When I heard that the baby had died, yes, I didn’t know what else to do so I put some money, a lot of money,” she emphasized as if it would make a difference, “into an envelope and left it for her. I hired someone to keep tabs on her. I wanted to know how the little girl was doing.”
“You mean your daughter?” I said with anger. “And who did you hire? The same guy you had come into the hospital and create a
commotion so your mother could switch the babies?” I took a sip of tea because my voice had gone hoarse. “Just tell me, Jackie, did you plan on doing this all along or was it just a spur of the moment thing?”
Jackie clasped her hands in her lap. “I knew my daughter was sick. I had an amnio at my doctor’s in New York. Only my mother knew. That’s why I wanted to have the baby here. I didn’t want anyone to know my history. I wanted to switch the baby, but the truth was I didn’t think I would have the nerve to do it. But my mother, well, she begged me. She said I would probably never have another child. It was her idea to begin with and I was always a dutiful daughter. When we met that young woman, Mrs. Newman, my mother convinced me she was young and would have lots of kids, but me…” Jackie shook her head. “I told my mother fine, if the Newmans had a daughter we would make the switch, but secretly I was hoping she had a boy.”
“And Sheldon figured it out,” I said.
But I never got to hear the rest of Jackie’s story. John and Gerard and Jim walked into the restaurant and straight to our table.
“Mrs. Spiegel, I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Sheldon Spiegel. Detective Maroni, would you please read Mrs. Spiegel her rights.” John gave me a quick glance and then took Jackie by the elbow.
The four of them left the restaurant leaving Annie and me sitting at the table holding back our tears.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Annie and I had plans to meet Shirley. There was a botanical garden show in New Haven, and as it turned out both Annie and Shirley were avid gardeners. Then we would have lunch and if time allowed a stop at Le Petit Bonbon. After more than a week, Annie and I would finally get to act like tourists on vacation. But there was one thing we had to do first. John had given us his blessing, and this time I remembered my manners and called first.
