“Sugar? Cream?” she asked.
“No, thank you.”
She handed me a teacup. I worried I’d crush it, but saw no safe place to put it. No coasters on the coffee table. I cradled it in my right hand and flipped album pages with my left. “Who’s this?” I pointed at a young girl beside Susan. They held their lunches in brown paper bags at their sides and smiled at the camera. First day of school, fourth grade.
She sat beside me, her weight not denting the unyielding sofa. “Oh, that’s Lucy, Susan’s best friend. You can’t tell from that picture, but she had bright-orange hair. The kids called her Raggedy Ann, but really, her hair was beautiful.” She sighed. “She lives in Maine now, Portland, with her husband. She has two kids, a son in the army, and a daughter in high school. Oh, but you know that, don’t you?”
“I spoke to her.”
“And she told you, about Susan being pregnant?”
“Yes.” No need to tell her that I’d tricked the information out of Lucy.
“Pregnant.” She stared at the window, but her gaze was unfocused. “I still can’t believe we missed it, that I missed it. She was sick, a couple of times. And you know, there was one thing.”
“One thing,” I said.
“Church.”
I waited a few moments before asking, “What about church?”
“Susan went a few times, without us, to arrange flowers and help with the fall fair.”
“And that was unusual?”
“Well, she used to like church when she was little, but as a teenager she was less involved. Started asking questions about whether God was real, and if He was, why he permitted wars and other atrocities.”
“Reasonable question,” I said.
She snorted. “Not to her father, it wasn’t. Anyway, it was a bit of a surprise, that’s all, when she said she’d offered to help out.”
“Is it possible she didn’t?” I asked. “That it was an excuse?”
She set her teacup into its saucer. “To meet her secret boyfriend, you mean? No. She really had been at church. After she disappeared, Father Corcoran stopped by, and he told us how kind it had been of Susan to help out at the church and how he’d pray for her.”
So much for using her church duties as a smokescreen, then.
“Maybe she went to pray for God to take care of her problem,” she said. “She wouldn’t be the first girl.”
“When did she start going to church?” I asked.
“June or July of 1972. Why?”
“Creating a timeline.” I was counting backward. If she was two and a half months pregnant in late September, she wouldn’t have gone to church to pray it away in June. Even July seemed a stretch.
I flipped the photo-album pages. Birthdays, with young Mikey, Susan, Bobby, David, and Carol. Mrs. Finnegan must’ve been the photographer because she was rarely captured on film. Mr. Finnegan also appeared infrequently. When he did, it was with a goofy expression. Mugging for the camera. That explained where Finny got it. There were pictures taken on the street or outside the house, with smoking neighbors smiling. A close-knit place, rather like Idyll, only more crimeridden if history had it right.
Susan evolved, from little girl to teenager. Her mother was right about her camera shyness. There were fewer photos as she got older, most of them candids. No more smiling head-on. Instead, she was at the edge of the group, watching the action or looking pensive.
“Do you think I could talk to Father Corcoran?” I asked. There’d been no statement from him in the boxes of material.
“Oh, I’m afraid he passed on, three years ago,” she said. “Lung cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
She frowned. “You know, Abigail Waters might remember that time. She was awfully active in the church. I suspected she had a crush on the organist, Mr. Williams. Anyway, Abigail was in church all the time, volunteering at Sunday School and on all of the committees. She and Susan saw each other during the summer.”
“Is Abigail still around?”
“She lives up on Bartlett Street. Would you like me to contact her?”
“That would be wonderful. I don’t suppose …”
“You want me to try her now? Let me see if she’s home.” She rose from the sofa and rubbed at her hip.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes. Don’t tell my son, if you please. He’s convinced I’m falling into disrepair.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
She left to make the call, and I paged through the album. Susan was the one I’d come for, but the images of Finny, freckled and young, distracted me. His wide, goofy smile. His thin frame, hidden now under pounds of fast food and beer. Finny had always been quick with a joke and a smile at work, but these pictures showed me a young man with no shadows on his face, a happy guy with no dark secrets.
“You’re in luck!” Mrs. Finnegan called. She appeared, a plate of cookies in her hands. “Abigail can see you as soon as she’s finished with her knitting group. They knit blankets for refugees. I suppose the refugees don’t mind the color schemes.” She set the plate down and smacked her wrist. “Naughty of me. But they are garish.”
“Mike sure was slim back in the day,” I said, pointing to a photo.
“Oh, him and Bobby. That’s from when they went fishing with my brother, Bernie. Mikey said fish were gross. He didn’t like the way they felt, all slimy.” She smiled. “He used to be a fishing pole himself, all elbows and knees. Took after his father.” She leaned in and looked at the photos. “Of all of my kids, I think Susan’s absence hit him hardest. Carol was starting her own family, and Dave was never close to Susan. Too many years between them. Bobby was close, and I know it was hard for him, at first. But he made peace with it. Mikey …” she shook her head, “Mikey won’t know peace until we find and bury her, and even then …” She looked up from the page, her eyes small behind her giant eyeglass frames. “He thinks it’s his fault. Because he made us wait to report it. But he didn’t make her go. Susan chose to leave. That breaks my heart.” She held her hand to her chest. “It does. But that isn’t his cross to bear.” She sighed. “He thinks I don’t see how it eats at him. It made him a crazy parent, always worried for his own kids.”
Really? My first months on the job, I didn’t even know he’d had kids. There were no pictures. No stories. Nothing. Then, one day, Wright mentioned Finny’s son, and I said to him, “You have a kid?” and everyone laughed.
“Have a cookie.” She thrust the plate at me. “And can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.” I took a cookie, to be polite.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
The half-chewed crumbs got stuck in my windpipe. I coughed, spraying cookie bits all over the pristine room. “Oh, sorry.” I gulped air. “Sorry. Let me clean up the mess.”
“Not at all. I caught you by surprise.” She picked up a crumb from the sofa and then said, “Well, do you?”
I saw what Mrs. Finnegan meant about the refugee blankets. The colors had to have come from the discount yarn bin. No one liked acid green and burnt orange. And together? Perhaps the blankets doubled as visual aids? Anyone wrapped in one could be seen from half a mile, easy.
“What a lovely blanket,” I said. “Did you make this yourself?”
Abigail Waters nodded. “My knitting circle makes blankets for refugees.” She checked me out. “Patricia says you’re looking into Susan’s disappearance. Has there been new information? A sighting?” She was all but drooling over the idea of a gossip scoop.
“Sorry, no.” I wasn’t going to tell her about Susan’s pregnancy. “I’m told Susan helped out at church the summer before she went missing.”
“Yes, she helped out with the kids at Sunday School and other tasks. She had a good eye for the flower arrangements. Many don’t.”
“Did she seem upset?”
“Upset?” She bit her lip. “No. She was a bit quiet, but she never was a rambunctious girl, not like some, and she was in churc
h. She certainly didn’t seem like she was planning to run away.”
“Was there anyone at the church she hung out with, a friend?”
“Like I said, she helped with the children, and the flower arrangements and some of the mending. I know priests are men of God, but they are tough on linens. Susan could sew well. Not many her age did. Her mother taught her.”
“Were there any boys who volunteered at the church?” I asked.
“The altar boys,” she said. “Luke and Peter.”
“Luke and Peter.” Was there a Luke mentioned in the files? The name seemed familiar.
“Susan’s age?” I guessed.
“Luke was. Peter was a bit younger. Fourteen, I believe.” Would Susan have dated someone two years her junior? “I think Luke had a crush on her at the time. He seemed very upset when she went missing.”
I’d look into Luke. Maybe he was our missing baby daddy.
“What were Luke and Peter’s last names?” I asked. “I might want to speak with them.”
“Luke Kelly and Peter Walsh. Luke’s still local, but Peter moved to Alaska, of all places. Works on a fishing boat up there. I can’t imagine.”
“Did Susan go to confession?”
“Confession?” She recoiled as if I’d said a filthy word. “It’s a sacrament, and it’s between a person and God.”
“And the priest,” I said.
She harrumphed. “I didn’t pay attention to when she went to confession, if she went.”
I gave it up. It was a moot point. Confession was protected. I couldn’t demand a priest tell me what someone told him, and the priest I wanted was dead. It had been a question prompted mostly by curiosity and a dark thought. What if the priest had been the one Susan had slept with? I blamed Wright. He’d planted the thought of an authority figure, someone older, into my brain.
My question had annoyed and upset Abigail Waters, so I thanked her for her time and made my escape.
Driving out of the city, with its frequent one-way roads and construction detours, my mind tried to get a grip on Susan Finnegan. A smart girl who helped at church, but who’d run away two years before, and who, as far as I’d found, told only one person besides the baby’s father that she was pregnant. Susan was excellent at keeping secrets. Far better than most criminals I’d encountered. No wonder Finny had managed to keep his sister and her missing status hush-hush for so long. Keeping secrets was a family talent.
DETECTIVE MICHAEL FINNEGAN
SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 1999
1000 HOURS
Funeral services for Elizabeth May Gardner were held at the Congregational Church in Salisbury, the same church the Gardners had attended when Elizabeth had been alive, the church they’d attended less frequently in the wake of her disappearance, the church they left when they divorced. Now Mick and his former wife, Hannah, sat beside each other, only their upper backs and heads visible from the tall pew they sat in, up front near the giant photo of Elizabeth that was propped on an easel. There was no coffin inside the church.
Lewis wriggled on the cushion-covered pew and cleared his throat. He looked a little off. Must’ve had a stomach bug after all. Hope it wasn’t catching. My toilet wasn’t clean enough for me to hug it.
The church was three-quarters full. The light coming through the large windows was oyster-colored, gray with a rainbow inside it. The minister rose and began talking about Elizabeth and how she’d made it home, to the bosom of Christ, years ago. Only now were we able to share in that good news.
Lew turned to me and whispered, “Good news?”
I said, “He’s going positive.”
A woman behind us in a large purple hat shushed us.
Sure enough, the minister, rather than go Old Testament and discuss justice and retribution, went very New Testament and spoke of Elizabeth’s eternal grace, of how she was delighting in paradise and having the eternal spring break everyone wanted but not all were invited to take part in.
I stared at the photo of Elizabeth. Her gap-toothed smile was hidden behind closed pink lips. Her hair was feathered and long, and she wore a blue sweater.
The minister introduced Regina, a cousin who was “like a sister to Lizzie.” He invited her up, to read a poem in honor of Elizabeth. Regina’s voice trembled as she read the poem’s title, “Away,” and its author, James Whitcomb Riley. She unfolded a piece of paper and read:
I cannot say and I will not say
That she is dead.—she is just away!
With a cheery smile, and a wave of hand,
She has wandered into an unknown land,
And left us dreaming how very fair
Its needs must be, since she lingers there.
And you—O you, who the wildest yearn
From the old-time step and the glad return,—
Think of her faring on, as dear
In the love of There, as the love of Here;
…
Think of her still as the same, I say:
She is not dead—she is just away!
I’d heard that poem before, but with male pronouns. Regina sniffled into a tissue and made her way, unsteady, down the stairs to the second pew. Then it was time for more happy thoughts from the minister on why death wasn’t bad, not really, not for the good people among us.
Lew’s face was grim as he watched the family stand and proceed up the aisle, toward the doors. He said, “Let’s get to the car.” We’d driven in his ride. He’d complained that mine was filthy and smelled like the inside of a Marlboro pack. A funeral home employee gave us a flag to attach to our window, so traffic would recognize us as part of the funeral caravan.
“What’d you think?” he asked, cracking the windows. The air smelled of freshly mown grass.
“The poem was awful.”
“I meant about the attendees,” he scolded.
“I think they were sad, except for the minister. He seemed pleased as punch. Never knew anyone could be so delighted in the face of a murder.”
“I meant, did you see anyone behaving oddly?”
“You’re kidding, right?” I watched as mourners poured out of the church, toward cars, anxious not to be left behind. “You expected the killer to show up to watch the havoc he wrought? Maybe he’ll be standing graveside, clutching a red rose.” I snorted.
“Glad you think this is entertaining.” He started the car, pushing too hard on the gas. He was gonna flood the engine.
“Oh, come on! You’re not serious? You think we’re going to find her killer here?” I waved my hand toward the people carefully picking their way to the cars in too-tight loafers and heels they rarely wore.
“Whatever. Just drop it.”
We pulled out, to join the caravan as it wound through towns until we reached the cemetery. Fewer people made the trip to the grave. Large floral bouquets dominated a dark wood coffin. The parents made a strange tableau. Mr. Gardner stood alone. His new wife had her arm around his ex-wife, who was sobbing into a handkerchief. Mr. Gardner’s face looked as if it was hewn from the same rock as his daughter’s headstone.
Elizabeth May Gardner
July 15, 1959–April 16, 1979
Beloved daughter
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
Interesting. They’d picked the date she’d gone missing as her date of death, though we were not sure the two were the same. And the quote was unexpected. Horatio’s words to Hamlet as he lies dying, post-poisoning. How was Elizabeth like Hamlet? I was overthinking it, no doubt. They probably thought the phrase pretty. That’s it. No more. It was a fault of mine to look for meaning everywhere. Used to drive wives #1 and #2 crazy. Wife #3 had been more forgiving of that fault, but less tolerant of others. Leaving the toilet seat up was, it turns out, grounds for divorce.
The minister kept the service very brief. People picked their way back to their cars, careful not to step on the grass under which the dead lay.
“Well?” I asked, when nearly everyone had gone.
�
��Well what?” Lewis said.
“See the killer lurking behind those gravestones?” I pointed toward two massive stone angels guarding headstones several rows away.
“Fuck off,” he said.
“Jesus, take a joke.”
“No, you show some respect.” He walked forward, his right shoulder driving into me as he passed by.
“Whoa! What the hell, Lewis? What is up with you?”
He started to walk for the car, and then he stopped. Shook. He came back to me, his eyes all anger. “The baby has Down’s.”
“What?” What baby? What was he talking about?
“Our baby,” he said. “The amniocentesis.”
It hit me. His baby. Their baby. “Are they sure?” I regretted the words. Not helpful.
He made a face like he was chewing rocks. “Not 100 percent. They can’t be. But it looks that way.”
What would they do? Keep the baby? Terminate the pregnancy? Unbidden, my mind went to Susan, my baby sister, pregnant all those years ago. Willing to terminate her pregnancy so she could have a life. And then deciding against it. I’d never know why. Never know what drove her to make her choices.
We stood, a few yards from Elizabeth’s grave. Workers came to lower the coffin. To cover it with dirt. To make it look like all the other graves in this place, its newness distinguishable only by the lack of moss on the headstone.
“What will you do?” I asked. The men worked quickly, ignoring us, talking sports. Just another grave, another corpse, another day.
“I don’t know. Janice, she’s so upset. I asked her if she wanted—” He shook his head. “She doesn’t know. She’s trying to digest it. We’re both trying.”
“I’m sorry if I was being an ass earlier.”
He rubbed his face. “No. I’m snappy. The past day’s been really tough. I hardly slept. It’s not your fault.”
“Sometimes I don’t know when to shut my mouth.”
His smile was tired and brief, but I saw it flash. “That’s true,” he said. “About a hundred percent of the time.”
Idyll Hands Page 17
