by Lee Harris
I had not believed I could arrange my getaway quickly enough to leave on Wednesday, so I had a day free to use in Oakwood. The other side of this whole mess, if there was another side to it, was who had killed Randy Collins. On Wednesday morning I took Eddie and walked down the block to the Greiners’ house.
Pine Brook Road is a pretty, curving street with houses on both sides. Some of the houses, like the one we live in, are fairly old and look like an earlier generation of building. But farther down the block where Mel and her family live, the land was developed later. I remember Aunt Meg saying how sad it was that those lovely old trees would be cut down for the new houses. That was a long time ago and those upstart houses are now twenty years old and many of them have had several owners. Some of the fine old trees were preserved and many new ones were planted and have achieved a great height and girth.
Mel’s house is on the other side of the street from ours and its far property line is shared with the Greiners. Beyond the Greiners are the Kovaks. When Eddie and I reached Mel’s driveway, Eddie turned into it.
“We’re not going here today,” I said.
“Wanna see Mel.”
“Mel’s not home. She’s teaching.”
“Wanna see Mel.” He sounded angry.
“She’s not there, Eddie.”
But he kept going. OK, I thought. Time for a lesson. We got to the front door and I pushed the bell. We could hear it ring inside the house.
“See? She’s not home.”
He reached for the bell but missed it by a long way. I pushed it again and we waited. Finally I said I was going. I could see tears form. He waited a few seconds, then followed me.
“Mel isn’t home,” I said. “Maybe we’ll see her this afternoon.” I took a tissue from my pocket and patted the tears while he pulled his face away. Oh boy, I thought. And I’m going away tomorrow.
“Let’s see if the Greiners are home,” I said as we got to their house.
We turned up their driveway and walked to the front door. I pushed the bell and we waited.
The door opened and Carol Greiner, wearing jeans and a man-tailored shirt tied at her waist, looked at us. “Chris,” she said.
“Hi, Carol. Do you have a minute?”
She looked as though she wasn’t sure. Then she said, “I can spare a minute. Come in.”
She was a wiry, intense woman with a little gray in her hair, which she kept on the long side, usually tied back in a scruffy ponytail that did not show off her face to good advantage. The impression I usually had of her was that certain things took too much time so she didn’t bother doing them, like making her hair look more flattering. She was on the right side of every cause in town. When I first moved to Oakwood and the question of allowing the residence for retarded adults came up, she was a loud and proud proponent. When the question of recycling grass and leaves was discussed, she said it would be money well spent. It had not been a surprise to me that she had fought for preserving a maple tree over someone else’s driveway.
We went into her family room and she gave Eddie a cookie that she assured me had no sugar (he took one bite and put it down) and asked if I wanted a cup of caffeine-free tea. I knew she was just being polite so I turned down her offer.
“So what brings you here this morning?” she said, moving sections of newspaper out of the way.
“The girl who had the accident,” I said, not wanting to be specific in front of my two-year-old, “was my guest for a couple of days and I feel duty bound to try to find out what happened.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Stanley Kovak was cutting down the tree, she saw him, he—you know.”
“It’s possible but I don’t think it happened that way. That was our ax that was found near the tree.”
“Really? I hadn’t heard that.”
“I don’t think it’s definite but our ax is missing and the one they found has my husband’s prints on it as well as the girl’s.”
“I see. You think she cut it down?”
“I think she may have.”
“But why?”
“Mel and I told her about the problem the day before and she seemed distressed. I think she felt people should channel their energy into more worthwhile causes.”
“That was a worthwhile cause,” Carol said in a low voice.
“I’m just repeating what she said. She may have thought she would bring a resolution to the disagreement.” I was trying to pick my words carefully. “Did the Kovaks ever tell you that their gun was missing?”
“That gun isn’t missing. It’s been hidden. It’s their gun that did it.”
“Did they ever talk about it?” I persisted.
“We don’t talk about guns in this family.”
“Did he ever mention owning it?” I asked.
“He did. He said he had it for protection. It made him feel safe.”
“I didn’t know he had a gun till Jack found out from the police.”
“Well, you don’t live next door to them. If you did, you would know.”
“Besides this turmoil, are they good neighbors?”
She took a minute to consider, as though deciding whether to say something nice about people that she obviously couldn’t stand. “We haven’t had any trouble. They take good care of their property. They don’t make a lot of noise. They’re pretty good neighbors.” It had a grudging sound to it but I thought she was being honest. “I have to be somewhere,” she said.
I stood and took Eddie’s hand. “Thanks for your help. I don’t suppose anyone in your family heard anything Sunday morning?”
“Nothing. We were all sleeping. Our bedroom is on the other side of the house and the boys sleep through everything, including alarms.” She gave me a faint smile, the first time she had loosened up since we’d come in.
“Thanks, Carol.”
Outside I asked Eddie, “Didn’t you like the cookie?”
“No. Bad cookie.”
I wondered if Carol’s sons had accustomed themselves to sugarless cookies or if they got their sugar fix away from home.
We kept walking and turned up the Kovaks’ drive, avoiding the raised area where the roots of the maple tree had done their deed. The Kovaks were somewhat older than their neighbors, having moved in when the house was first built, with young children who were now grown. They had a four-bedroom house just for the two of them, although I noticed that at least one daughter came to visit on weekends. Today the garage door was closed and I hoped they were home. I rang the doorbell and Mrs. Kovak opened it immediately.
“Hi, I’m Chris Brooks, your neighbor down the street.”
“Yes, of course. Come in, please. I see you and your little boy all the time. He gets plenty of fresh air, don’t you, dear?” She bent over to smile at him in a very grandmotherly way.
“Is your husband home?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. He’s in the sunroom. You want to talk to him?”
“I’d like to talk to both of you.”
We went into the sunroom at the back of the house. I am always intrigued at how people manage to personalize their homes, adding interesting rooms, decks, and patios, landscaping in unusual ways. The sunroom at the back of the Kovaks’ house was not large but I could see why it was probably a favorite room. It was filled with beautiful green plants, some of them in bloom, and a small tree stood in a corner. The furniture was comfortable and whatever the season, there was a lovely view out the windows.
“Stanley, this is Chris Brooks, our neighbor. She lives in Margaret’s old house.” She turned to me. “Such a lovely woman, your aunt.”
He looked up from a book he was reading, set it aside, and stood to greet us. Mrs. Kovak left for a moment, returning with a cookie for Eddie that I was sure was sweet. He took it, said thank you, and dug in.
“So,” Mr. Kovak said, “to what do we owe the pleasure?”
“I want to talk to you about what happened on Sunday. The gir
l who had the accident was a guest of mine and I want to do everything I can to find out who was responsible.”
“Well, we weren’t.”
“Do you have any idea who was?”
“Nope.”
“Did either of you hear anything?”
“Nothing.” His wife was silent.
“About your gun—”
“I don’t have it. It was stolen, I reported it stolen, and I haven’t seen it since.”
“When did you buy it?”
“Oh boy. That’s a good question. You remember when that was, Ellie?”
“Must be ten years ago.”
“More. I don’t remember. They have a record at the police station, unless they lost that, too. I did it on the up and up, got a license, bought the gun, just the way the law says you should.”
“Where did you keep it?”
“Kept it in my bedroom. We’ve got a big closet and I had it wrapped in soft cloth, the way you’re supposed to, up on a shelf where the grandkids couldn’t reach it.”
“Was it loaded?”
“I always kept one bullet in it.”
“And you had other bullets besides?”
“Had a box of ’em. Kept it on the same shelf.”
“The Greiners knew you had a gun, didn’t they?”
“I didn’t make no secret of it.”
“When did you find it was missing?”
“When was that, Ellie?”
“It must be a month ago.”
“More. Five or six weeks. I reached up to get something and I felt the cloth that I kept it in and didn’t feel anything inside. I felt around and then I got a stepstool and climbed up to have a look. Took everything down from the shelf but it wasn’t there.”
“Was the box of bullets there?”
“It was there. I couldn’t tell you if any of them were missing. I didn’t count them.”
“And you reported the loss to the police.”
“I went over there myself the next morning. Gave them all the information, answered all their questions.”
“And there’s no record that you reported it,” I said.
“Can’t help it if they’re incompetent.” He seemed to shrug off the whole incident.
“Do you ever leave your door unlocked?” I asked.
A look passed between them and I sensed this was an issue they had talked about before. “I do,” Mrs. Kovak said. She looked grim. “When we moved in, this was the safest place in the world. Everybody trusted everybody else. There wasn’t any need to lock your doors.”
“You can’t trust everybody, Ellie. You know that.”
“At first, I was very careful. I’d lock the door every time I went out because Stanley wanted it that way. We had bolts put on all the doors and I’d lock them, too. But after a while, it just didn’t seem all that necessary. I remember once, I went somewhere and forgot to turn a tea kettle off so I called my neighbor—they’re gone now—and asked her to go inside and turn off the stove. I’d left the back door open so it wasn’t any trouble for her.”
Stanley Kovak watched his wife as she told her story. His face was the picture of disapproval. I could sense her sadness that times had changed for the worse, that those friendly, trusting times were gone and you couldn’t live with the same sense of security as in the good old days.
“Good cookie,” Eddie said, beaming.
“Let me get you another one, dear. Why don’t you come to the kitchen with me and you can pick one out.” She seemed relieved to get out of the sunroom.
“So anyone could have walked in and found your gun,” I said.
“Anyone who saw us leave the house. I work only part-time now, which is why I’m home this morning, but Ellie runs around, visits friends, goes shopping. If she doesn’t lock the door, I tell you, it’s asking for trouble.”
Since I have a husband who feels essentially the same way, although he expresses himself rather less aggressively than Stanley Kovak, I felt some empathy for his point of view. “My husband is a police officer,” I said. “He agrees with everything you say.”
“Sounds like he has some sense. Can you tell me what all these questions are for?”
“I want to find out who killed that poor girl on Sunday morning.”
“Well, you’re lookin’ in the wrong place. I hated that tree, hated what it did to my driveway, what it did to my cars every time you went over that cracked cement. I would’ve given a prize to anyone who’d cut it down. Why that girl did it, I can’t tell you. I never saw her before I saw her dead.”
“Had you been near an agreement with the Greiners on the tree?” I asked.
“There was some talk about getting in a professional mediator but nothing was settled. That’s where I’d look for a killer, if I was you.”
“At the Greiners’?”
“Who else?”
“Stanley,” his wife said, coming back, holding Eddie’s hand, “you shouldn’t say that. They’re decent people.”
“Decent people sometimes go berserk. I think they saw what was going on and came out and shot her out of pure anger.”
“Where did they get the gun?” I asked.
“Don’t look at me. I didn’t shoot anybody. They’ve got two big boys over there could’ve come in here and stolen the gun.”
I didn’t want to think about that. “I don’t think they’re people who have anything to do with guns,” I said.
“That’s the parents. You never know about the children.”
I decided I had given him long enough on his soapbox. I stood and asked Eddie how he liked the cookie. He assured me it was very good and I wiped the crumbs off his face so we wouldn’t leave a trail as we left. I thanked them both for their help, shook their hands to show them we were friends, and walked back to our house.
15
I sat beside a window on the plane the next morning with a breakfast tray in front of me, hoping all had gone well with Jack and Eddie. There was an empty seat to my left and a man with a laptop on the aisle. While he ate his breakfast, the laptop sat on the seat between us.
I had talked to Jack last evening about my interviews with Carol Greiner and the Kovaks. Jack was skeptical about the police losing a report of a missing gun but he said anything could happen and sometimes did, as he knew from thirteen years on the job. Still, it didn’t seem likely.
We had no way of knowing whether it was the Kovak gun that had killed Randy Collins, only that the bullet in her came from the same caliber as the gun he had registered. And if the gun never turned up, we could never do the test firings and would never know for sure. There were plenty of handguns of that type around. And with the ax that was found at the crime scene almost certainly ours, it didn’t make sense that Stanley Kovak had been the one to cut down the tree. The whole thing made me dizzy.
Ahead of me was a visit to a state I had never been in, which could describe most of the states in our country. I didn’t have a lot of questions for Mrs. DelBello, but I thought that if we talked awhile, her memory might be jogged. If she could remember that Randy’s natural mother was a petite blond or a sixteen-year-old redhead, that might be enough to get Joseph off the hook.
Jack had reserved a compact car for me at the airport and I followed Mrs. DelBello’s directions to her home. I had called her last night and confirmed that I would see her today. She lived in a small house on a quiet street with similar small houses. Cars tended to be parked in garages or on driveways so there was plenty of room for mine right in front of her address.
I left my little suitcase in the trunk of the rental car, made sure I had the keys in my hand, and locked the doors. I rang the bell next to a door painted a beautiful shade of blue and waited.
The door eventually opened and a gray-haired woman with a sallow complexion, holding a cane, said, “You must be the lady from New York.”
“I’m Chris Bennett. I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. DelBello.”
We went inside, I following as she walked slowly.
She didn’t seem to need the cane to walk but probably took it for a sense of security. She sat in a firm chair and laid the cane on the floor beside her.
“Oh, I didn’t take your coat.”
“It’s OK. I’ll just leave it here. Please don’t get up.” I folded it over the back of the sofa and sat on a chair.
The room was clean and orderly and comfortably furnished, a carpet covering the floor and attractive draperies at the windows. There was a fireplace on one wall, the mantle covered with pictures from one end to the other.
“This is very comfortable,” I said.
“I’ve lived here a long time. We raised three children here. My husband died several years ago and it looks like I don’t have much longer myself, but I’ll stay here as long as I can.”
“How long did you work for God’s Love Adoptions?”
“I went there as a girl doing secretarial work. While I was there, I took courses and got my degree in social work. From the beginning until I retired was forty-four years.”
“You must have enjoyed the work,” I said.
“Well, you’re doing a service. On the one hand, there’s a girl who’s got a baby she can’t bring up and on the other there’s a couple that’s desperate to have one. So you could say it’s a double blessing.”
“When did Randy Collins first come to you?”
“Oh, it’s quite some time ago, a couple of years anyway. She wanted to find her birth mother. They all do nowadays. Back in the fifties, there was a lot less of that.”
“What did you tell her, Mrs. DelBello?”
She looked down, as though getting her thoughts together. “Those records were sealed, you know.”
“I understand. I’m not passing judgment.”
“She came to our office and they said they couldn’t help her. It’s what we say when they come to us. I was still working there but I was close to retirement. I saw her when she came in. She seemed like a sweet girl. She cried when they turned her down. She was about to go and I got up from my desk and went to her. I said, ‘Let’s sit down and talk,’ and we went back to my little cubicle. She was very grateful. I told her we couldn’t give her information that we had promised to keep secret. She begged and pleaded and I left her for a minute and went to check the files. It had been one of my cases and I remembered it. I went back and told her I would do what I could and asked where I could call her. She gave me a number and said she was in Cincinnati for only a day or two. I walked her to the door and she left.”
