Killer Tied

by Lesley A. Diehl

  “He repeated what I’d told you, Eve. ‘This is Irene’s story. I think she has to tell it to you if she’s willing.’ ”

  Grandy continued, “I replied that I respected that, but that people’s lives were in jeopardy, and one man was dead. They’re flying down here. They should be arriving this evening.”

  “They’re coming here?” I couldn’t keep the excitement out of my voice. “What did Don tell her to change her mind about talking to you?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out later. Don’t get your hopes up. She’s kept this secret for decades. Meantime, Eve ….”

  “Meantime, could someone run out and get me a pepperoni, mushroom, black olive, and sausage pizza?”

  Grandy shook her head and gave me a look of disgust.

  I slapped myself in the forehead. “Duh. What is wrong with me? I’m sorry for being so selfish. Get something for yourselves too. It’s on me.”

  She continued to shake her head as she backed out the door.

  “I’m eating for two, you know.”

  She stuck her head back in. “That’s not new. You always ate for two.”

  I rummaged through my closet for some clothes that said “private eye.” I wanted Aunt Irene to believe she was talking with a professional, not simply one of her relatives. I thought an official look might persuade her of the gravity of the situation. It was more than the case of a disappearing daughter. It was a matter of murder. I chose black pants, a white cotton top, and silver faux-leather jacket and paired the ensemble with my best pair of red-leather pumps. I looked at myself in the mirror. There. Eve Appel Egret. Sassy woman detective.

  Sammy, Nappi, Madeleine, and David greeted me when I walked out of the bedroom. My garb and the determined look on my face must have convinced them the old Eve was back.

  Well, almost everyone except Madeleine.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea to wear so high a heel?” she asked.

  “Hey, I’m pregnant, not handicapped,” I shot back at her.

  The doorbell rang and Nappi answered it. “Who ordered the loaded pizza, as if I didn’t know?”

  There were two pizzas and two liters of soda. Everyone stood back as I lunged for the box. Once I began stuffing the pie in my face, the others joined in. I ate more than anyone else. We cleaned up, and Grandy offered to make coffee. I eyed the last piece of pizza left in the box, but decided I was full enough to let it go.

  Everyone turned down coffee and left to let Grandy and me have the house to ourselves for when Irene and her husband arrived. Sammy remained a few minutes longer to explain he was going to Grandfather’s to spend the evening with the boys, then bring them back here later.

  “I’ll call first to make certain we’re not interrupting, and if we are, we’ll stay overnight with Grandfather,” he said.

  “I wish I could say I believed this conversation will go well, but it could be a short one if Irene decides not to talk about her daughter.”

  “Then what?” asked Sammy.

  “I may have to return to Connecticut to find Eleanor and perhaps have another chat with Selma. I wish Jerry would get in touch. He must know something about Eleanor by now.” No one had mentioned it, but more important than locating Eleanor was finding her mother. She hadn’t been seen since she fled Connecticut to come here, and according to Eleanor and her father, to find me. She hadn’t made contact with me or anyone around here, and that made me worry that Freddie and his guys had found her first.

  Sammy’s brow wrinkled in concern.

  “Don’t worry about me, Sammy. I know how to look after myself. And the bump here.” I patted my small tummy.

  “If you go, I’m insisting Nappi accompany you, although he didn’t do a very good job of taking care of you the first trip.”

  I knew Nappi had taken the very best care of me. I was the one at fault for not listening to what my body had been screaming at me. I hadn’t told Sammy about Freddie and his guys and how Nappi had run them off. I wasn’t going to do that now and take the chance of alarming him. He wouldn’t forbid me to go—he wasn’t that kind of a husband—but he would worry and worry and worry.

  “What time is it, Grandy?” I asked.

  “Ten minutes later than the last time you asked me.”

  I wanted to be certain that Eleanor’s mother wasn’t my mother. Her mother had to be Brenda, my aunt, and I expected Irene would confirm this, but I knew nothing else. How had she gotten into the hospital and why had she used the name Mary Appel? Was she hiding from someone real or fleeing some imaginary boogeyman? What was Freddie the Bull’s role in all this? How did this relate to the death of Eleanor’s father? I had a lot of questions for my great-aunt. I had one piece of the puzzle and none of the others, and I was counting on Irene to help me put everything together. Foremost in my mind as I paced back and forth in front of the window that looked out onto the street was this unsettling thought: what if Irene didn’t know the answers to these questions? Grandy had cautioned me to let Irene take the lead tonight and not pressure her or say too much until she was done speaking.

  A car slowed as it passed my house, then sped up again.

  “That looked like a rental. Do you think she chickened out?” I asked Grandy.

  I watched the car drive to the end of the street, then turn around and come back. It pulled up in front of my house. A man and a woman got out. It had been years since I’d seen my Great-Aunt Irene, but I would have recognized her anywhere. She was the doppelganger of my Grandy, right down to the mass of curly white hair that shone almost blue in the glow of the streetlamp.

  I opened the door without letting them knock first.

  Irene hesitated a moment, then stepped into the living room. There was no attempt to hug me or Grandy, but Grandy was not having any of that. She grabbed her sister and enveloped her in a Grandy-sized hug. Irene stiffened as if itching to push her sister away, but Grandy pulled her closer. I could see Irene’s body relax, and the two sisters, separated for so long, gave themselves up to an embrace so close an elf’s eyelash couldn’t have come between them. Tears ran down their cheeks. I dashed to the kitchen for a box of tissues.

  When they stepped back from each other, each dabbing at their cheeks, I hugged Irene. Grandy included Don in her embrace. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and whispered, “What did you say to convince her to come here?”

  “That it was overdue for her and her sister to get together again.”

  “That’s it? She doesn’t know anything else?”

  He shook his head.

  Once Don and Irene settled on the sofa across from Grandy and me—we sat in chairs across the coffee table from them—Irene couldn’t seem to stem the tsunami of tears that kept spilling from her eyes. She grabbed Don’s hand and tried to speak, but her voice cracked with emotion and she shook her head.

  “I wasn’t expecting Eve to be here.”

  “Is that a problem for you? I can leave, and you and Grandy and Don can talk without me if that would make you feel better.” I hoped she would ask me to stay. I wanted her to answer all my questions. I didn’t want that information filtered through another party.

  “No, no. It’s fine, Eve. I need to talk with you and Grandy, my family. We’ve been estranged too long, and it’s my fault.”

  “Tell us about Brenda,” said Grandy.

  “Grandy,” I hissed in disapproval, “you told me to take it easy and not push her. And now what have you done?”

  Irene gave me a soft smile. “Your grandmother always had a way of getting right to the point. It appears her granddaughter is just like her. Besides, I didn’t fly all this way to shy away from talking about Brenda. What do you want to know?”

  “Where is she? I know she’s not buried in her father’s plot. Why would she be? She never knew the man. No one did.”

  Irene paled. Despite her claim that she understood Grandy’s forward nature, it was clear Grandy’s words hit home and hard.

  She seemed to gather courag
e from Don’s arm around her shoulders. She looked up at him, and he nodded, signaling her to talk despite the pain it was causing her.

  She blew her nose on a tissue and settled herself deeper into the couch. “I guess I’d better go back to when Brenda was small.” She gave her nose another blow and cleared her throat. “Could I have a glass of water?”

  “Sure.” I jumped up from the couch to get it for her.

  “Would anyone like coffee? Or something stronger?” asked Grandy.

  I could have used about a barrel of Scotch, but that was out of the question.

  Don said yes to coffee, and we waited while Grandy got it together for him.

  Are we all cozy and settled now or do we have to exchange pleasantries about the weather? I ground my teeth and suppressed a growl. If this took any longer, I would be due to go into labor.

  Irene cleared her throat again and resumed speaking, her voice stronger than I expected. “Brenda was a difficult child.” Turning her gaze on Grandy, she added, “You must have noticed it when we got together. And don’t you remember that time when Brenda and Eve’s mother were playing together? Brenda bit her and then tried to hit her with the paddle from a canoe? We chalked it up to over-exuberant play, but Brenda grew more and more aggressive in her interactions with classmates. I knew something wasn’t right, though I tried to deny it. I was contacted by the school and asked to remove her because of her disruptive behavior. The teachers couldn’t control her. For a time I tried to home-school her, then I hired someone to come in and give her lessons. She hit the person I hired with a wrench, knocked her unconscious, then tried to set the house on fire. Brenda had been in and out of therapy with several psychiatrists and psychologists before this, but nothing seemed to help.”

  “So you committed her to a mental institution?”

  Irene smiled at my question.

  “My dear Eve, you just don’t know. I committed her to many such facilities off and on through most of her teen years and into adulthood. She’d stay for a time, get better we thought, then come home to relapse again. She became convinced that someone was after her. Instead of coming home, she sneaked away from the institution, and I never heard from her again. I tried to find her. I hired several private detectives, but no one could find a trace of her. Finally, I gave her up for dead, although sometimes I felt as if she might just walk back into the house again. One occasion I thought I could feel her presence just outside the door or in the woods. But she never returned.”

  “So you made up that story about her dying of influenza,” Grandy said.

  “Most of the time I wished it was true. She was so unhappy, so frightened, so delusional. It would be better if she was dead.” Irene broke down in tears once more.

  This was not an easy story for her to tell, and my news that Brenda might still be alive might not be of any comfort to her.

  “Did you receive a diagnosis for her condition?” I asked.

  Irene gave a snicker and a half smile. “Many. You know how that goes. Each diagnosis necessitated yet another round of medications, and she was placed on so many, I can’t tell you the names of all of them.”

  “Why did you use my mother’s name when you admitted her to Hopkins?” I asked.

  Irene paled and hesitated before answering. “I never admitted her to Hopkins. And why would I use your mother’s name?”

  Chapter 14

  Irene looked puzzled, her brow knit, her head tipped to one side as if trying to understand why I would ask such an odd question.

  All my hopes for resolving the mystery of my mother came to a sudden end, but not in the way I wanted. Grandy reached across and patted my hand.

  “Hopkins is very expensive, Eve,” Irene said. “There’s no way I could afford to place Brenda there. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  I seemed to have gone mute. I wanted to explain, but the words would not come, so Grandy jumped in and told Irene most of the story about Brenda and Eleanor, editing here and there, especially with respect to my mother, and avoiding any mention of why I’d asked the question I had.

  Irene seemed unable to take in what Grandy had said. She sat frozen on the couch, staring across the room.

  “Maybe something stronger than water?” I suggested, grabbing a snifter from the liquor cabinet and splashing brandy into it. I handed it to her and she took a small sip. Her voice when she spoke was almost too soft to hear. “So, Brenda is still alive? And I have a granddaughter?” She turned her attention to Don. “Did you know this when she suggested I come here?”

  “Some of it,” he replied.

  Irene’s face brightened as if she had dropped ten years. “That’s wonderful. I want to see them. Where are they?”

  “We don’t know right now,” I managed to mutter.

  Irene’s look of joy turned to one of anger and despair, her eyes narrowing. “Is this some kind of a cruel joke? You extract a painful story about my daughter from me, one I’ve kept secret all these years to protect her, and now you say you can’t find her or her daughter?” Irene’s face was mottled with rage.

  “It’s very complicated, and a man is dead. Murdered. He was your daughter’s common-law husband,” Grandy said.

  Irene mouth twisted in a look of suspicion. “You think my daughter killed him, don’t you?”

  “The police think my father-in-law killed him, although there doesn’t seem to be a motive.”

  “And you think Brenda had a motive,” Irene snapped. “What would that be?”

  Don, noting how anguished Irene had become, took both her hands in his and said, “It won’t do any good for us to become angry. You can understand why your sister and Eve might think Brenda was responsible for Henry Montrose’s death. Brenda was often violent and out of control. Be honest, Irene. You were scared of her. I was too.”

  Irene nodded and covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God. I find her and it begins all over again.”

  My thoughts exactly. It begins all over again. If it wasn’t Brenda using my mother’s name, then who was it? Not my mother. Not that again. I shook my head, trying to prevent my thoughts from returning to the question: was my mother alive?

  Grandy shook her head. “No, Eve. It had to be someone else.”

  “Is there any reason you can think of why Brenda might claim that she was my daughter and come here looking for Eve?”

  “She did that?” Irene said.

  “She was pretty convinced she was Mary Appel,” I said, “and she’d also convinced her husband and her daughter. She’s been living with that persona for over twenty years.” I decided I had to go with the most obvious explanation for what Selma told me. “It appeared she used my mother’s name to seek treatment at Hopkins. What reason would she have for doing that?”

  I caught a flicker of something in her eyes before Irene blinked and said, “No reason at all.”

  Irene appeared to be either lying or hiding something. With a shrug of her shoulders, she looked me in the eye and said, “I can’t imagine, but Brenda was mentally ill, and she was close to your mother when they were children.”

  That made sense, and yet I felt Irene was avoiding telling us something, something very important.

  We talked for several more hours, catching up on our own lives. Finally, the subject turned to Brenda, her daughter Eleanor, and Eleanor’s father.

  “The entire family seemed to feel someone was after them. Does that make any sense to you?” I asked.

  “Brenda always expressed a fear of someone coming after her. It was one of her delusions, so I’m not surprised it has followed her all these years,” Irene said.

  “Could it have been more than a delusion? Could somebody have been after her?” I asked.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Irene with a look of wide-eyed innocence, then changed the subject. “We have to find her and my granddaughter.”

  “We’re working on it, and maybe you can help,” I said.

  “Of course. Anything I can do to ge
t her back.”

  Grandy pointed out what I had neglected to mention: Irene needed to talk with the authorities. Unable to find any living relative for Mr. Montrose, Frida would want to find out as much as possible about Brenda.

  I could understand how bittersweet this visit was becoming for Irene. She now had reason to believe her daughter was alive, but she had to be overwhelmed with worry that Brenda could be a person of interest in the death of the man she called her husband.

  As for me, I still had work to do and no certainty that I could put aside the possibility that my mother was alive. If my mother hadn’t entered Hopkins and Brenda hadn’t used her name, then who was the woman whose records in Hopkins held my mother’s name? All my options seemed to point in one direction. I had to return to Connecticut to find Eleanor and Jerry and to question Selma again. I needed more information from my old frenemy, information I was certain she would not be willing to provide. I needed to strong-arm her in a way Nappi would respect. No, not with threats of physical harm or blackmail. Something more powerful.

  It was late when Irene and Don drove off to their motel.

  “All that time talking, and we managed to avoid one of the most important questions about Irene and Brenda’s plight,” I said, stifling a yawn with my hand.

  Grandy knew what I was saying. “I think Irene had enough difficulty telling us about Brenda and then adjusting to finding out her daughter was alive and mentally no better now than she had been years ago. We’ll leave the other for another time.”

  The “other” to which Grandy was referring was the matter of the identity of Brenda’s father. Did he know about Brenda? I decided the answers to these questions had to be related to Freddie the Bull’s contractual interest in locating the Montrose family. I assumed Freddie’s tail on us up North had everything to do with the Montroses and was unrelated to my family. A tiny voice that would not stop nagging at me said I could be wrong. Shoving that doubt to the back of my mind for consideration when I was less tired, I called Sammy and told him not to wake the boys, but to come on over if he wanted to. He wanted to.