The Mother's Day Murder

by Lee Harris

  “Women who worked here at the same time as Katherine. Maybe someone who quit while she was here, maybe someone who was pregnant, maybe someone who became ill and couldn’t work.”

  “In the year that Katherine Bailey was here.”

  “Yes.”

  He dropped his head forward and closed his eyes. I had the sense of a human information retrieval system at work. He took a pencil and wrote on a sheet of paper in front of him. When he came out of his reverie, he picked up the phone and pressed a button. “You wanna come in here, Myra? I’ve got a little job for you.”

  A woman in her thirties, nicely dressed but not looking like a New York executive secretary, appeared at the door a second later.

  Houlihan handed her the sheet of paper. “Try looking for these names in the old file. They worked here maybe twenty years ago.”

  Myra took the paper and left without a word. Jerry Houlihan offered me coffee and went to get it himself. We talked a few sips’ worth when he came back and then Myra turned up with the files.

  “Good girl,” he said appreciatively and with a distinct lack of sensitivity that seemed to go right by Myra. “Here we go. Carla Higgins. I remember Carla. Nice girl, nice looking. Worked here for a while, left for a while, came back, stayed a couple of years, then left forever. Want to have a look?”

  I reached over for the folder, hoping there might be a picture of her, but there wasn’t. “What did she look like?” I asked.

  “Tiny little thing, petite, you’d probably say. Five feet tall if she stretched. Cute as a button.”

  “Do you recall why she left?”

  “She found a job that paid better somewhere, didn’t like it, and came back to our happy family.”

  I smiled. He was a bit of a character. I flipped through the file but found nothing that would make her a possible mother for Randy Collins. If she was only five feet tall, Mrs. DelBello would have remembered her size. “Do you know if this address is current?” I asked.

  “I’d have to guess that it isn’t, but that’s where she was living last time she set foot in our office.”

  I jotted down the address although I didn’t intend to visit there unless she turned out to be the most likely of the prospects and I had time to spare.

  He took the folder and handed me a second one. “Ginny Forster. I loved that girl but she couldn’t spell ‘the.’ She was everybody’s friend. If you needed an aspirin, Ginny had one for you. If you cut your finger, she had a Band-Aid. I think she used to fix up some of the girls with old boyfriends of hers—not Katherine, of course, but the others. A heart as big as an elephant.”

  I listened to the description with enjoyment and looked at her file. Like the previous one, it told me nothing relevant to the birth of Randy Collins. “What did she look like?” I asked.

  “Oh, medium height, I’d say, medium hair, not too dark, not too light, pleasant, outgoing, slim, a smile that made you feel good. If she could’ve spelled, I might’ve married her myself, except, of course, I was already married to the most wonderful woman in the world.”

  “I see she left in April of that year,” I said.

  “Sometime in the spring, that’s what I remember.”

  “Do you remember why?”

  “One of those boyfriends panned out, I guess. She decided to get married and he didn’t want her to work. Kind of outdated outlook, but who am I to criticize the young?”

  “She was still slim when she left?” I asked.

  “Never changed, that Ginny. What a lovely girl.”

  I wrote down the address. Her married name had been added, perhaps because they had to send her tax statements the following year. I handed back the folder and waited.

  “And here’s the one you’ve been waiting for.” He gave me a big grin and handed the third folder to me. “Barbara Sawyer. She worked here for a couple of years, got herself pregnant, came crying to me about it, asked if she could stay on. A lot of places wouldn’t have let her, you know, but Abe and I talked about it and decided what the hell. It was better that she work as long as she could than go on welfare. So she stayed till she was bulging and then she left. She even came back afterward.”

  “Did she keep the baby?” I asked.

  “Now, that’s a good question. She didn’t come back here for maybe six months so I kind of assumed she was home being a mother. But when she started working again, she didn’t talk about the baby at all and we didn’t ask out of politeness. She got married eventually; that’s her address right there on the first page. Haven’t seen her for a while but as far as I know, she’s still married, has a couple of kids, and I think she’s got herself a nice life.”

  “I’d like to talk to her,” I said.

  “I wish I could figure out what you’re after.” He looked at me with a face that said: Tell me.

  “I really can’t discuss it,” I said. “I’m sorry. This is between Katherine and me.”

  “Well, then I won’t push. You take the address and phone number and maybe Barbara’ll talk to you. Her married name is there, too, right under Sawyer.”

  I found it and wrote it down, “Phillips.” I looked at my watch and decided I’d better get going. I wanted very much to make that plane this afternoon and get back to Jack and Eddie.

  Before I left, Mr. Houlihan called the number for Barbara Phillips, talked to her, and said I would be coming within the half hour. Then I dashed.

  It was a small house with a basketball hoop at the side of the driveway. The woman who opened the door was in her forties, wore little makeup, and had on jeans and a red man-tailored shirt. The shirt was the only bright thing about her. She had a sallow complexion and her hair was faded, strands of gray visible throughout. We were about the same height so she fit the description Mrs. DelBello had given me.

  We sat in her living room and I took a deep breath before beginning. “I want to ask you some questions about a painful time in your life, Mrs. Phillips.”

  “What do you mean, painful?”

  “You gave birth to a child about twenty years ago.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I’m not going to spread this around, but I need to know about it for the sake of someone else.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Mr. Houlihan told me. I asked if anyone worked in the office that year who might have been pregnant.”

  “It was a long time ago. I haven’t talked to anyone about it for years.”

  “Where did you have the baby, Mrs. Phillips?”

  “In the hospital. Good Samaritan.”

  “Did you keep her?”

  “Her? I had a boy.”

  I could have kicked myself for being so stupid, for asking a question that assumed something I didn’t know. “What?” I said.

  “I had a boy, not a girl.”

  “Did you keep him?”

  “No. I gave him up. I was single—I guess you know that already. My mother couldn’t help out and I couldn’t work if I had to take care of a baby.”

  “What adoption agency did you use?”

  “Uh, I had a lawyer handle it. I didn’t go to an agency.”

  “Do you know who adopted your baby?”

  “We decided to keep the whole thing quiet, anonymous. The lawyer has the name, but I never saw it. They came from out of state is what I remember.”

  “Have you ever heard from your child?”

  “No, never.”

  “Have you made any effort to find him?”

  “No.” She looked sad and troubled. “Why do you need to know this?”

  “It’s very complicated. It has to do with an adopted child that was born twenty years ago at Good Samaritan Hospital. I don’t think it was your child, but I want to get as many facts as I can. Did you see your baby before you gave him away?”

  “They brought him to me, yes. I held him. He was real cute, had a lot of dark hair. He was probably the best looking of all my children.”

  “Who brought you the papers to si
gn?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I guess it was the lawyer or someone who worked for the lawyer.”

  “A woman?”

  “It could’ve been a woman.”

  “You remember her name?”

  “No.”

  “Mrs. DelBello?”

  She thought about it. “I don’t remember that name.”

  “Would you give me your lawyer’s name?”

  She looked at me, then away. “No, I won’t give you his name. I don’t want to answer any more questions. And I don’t want you talking to people about this. I want my privacy. Jerry Houlihan should’ve known better. It wasn’t anybody’s business what happened to me.”

  “I know and you’re right. Thank you very much. I appreciate your help.”

  I got in the car and drove away as fast as I could. I was aware that Barbara Phillips was watching from the front window, the curtain pulled back as I started the motor. I felt a little ill. I was inquiring into things I had no right to know and I was hurting the people I was talking to, just by asking my questions. Maybe Barbara Phillips had really given birth to a girl and had decided to lie to me just to screw up my facts. I wouldn’t blame her. I knew she would now think about this, whether she wanted to or not, this unhappy chapter of her past that she had believed was set aside.

  I had hurt Hope McHugh, too, and I felt terrible about it. When Joseph heard about my inquisition of her sister, she would be justifiably angry, even if she understood my motives.

  At a traffic light I tried to think of what else there was to accomplish before I went home. I couldn’t think of anything so on the green I found my way to the airport, returned the car, and got myself on the next plane to New York.

  So what had I accomplished in these two days? I asked myself as I flew east. I had two possible suspects for the mother of Randy Collins: Hope McHugh who swore she had never been pregnant, and Barbara Phillips who swore she had given birth to a boy. As I sat watching the heavens go by, I reviewed my conversation with Barbara Phillips. So much of what she had said might be untrue. I had stupidly tipped my hand by asking about the baby as though I knew it was a girl and she might have just decided to foul me up, to confuse me in order to get rid of me. It hadn’t occurred to me until now, but what if she thought I was an agent for the child? Maybe I was trying to set up a meeting between them, a meeting that the child wanted and that she wanted no part in. I could see now I had handled it very badly. But that meant she might well be Randy’s natural mother. The dates worked out and that was the most important thing, not to mention the fact that she had actually given birth. But I could think of no way to prove she was the mother unless a court ordered a blood test.

  Thinking further, I had to wonder if there was any way she could have been involved in Randy’s death, and I could see none. She was a wife and the mother of teenagers. To imagine her in Oakwood last Sunday morning with a gun was beyond the limits of my imagination.

  But if she was the mother, Joseph wasn’t, and that was what I was out to prove. Eventually, it all put me to sleep.

  20

  Jack and I arrived home at about the same time. Eddie’s absolute glee at seeing me raised my spirits to the roof. I think my greatest reservation about leaving a small child is that you can’t fully explain that you will return, that he shouldn’t worry, that Mommy will absolutely come back. I spent a lot of time with him that evening, happy that the weekend was upon us and I would be around for the next two days. When he was finally exhausted, I took him upstairs and put him to bed.

  “You’re getting too big for a crib, Eddie,” I said. “Would you like a bed to sleep in?”

  “Wanna bed.”

  “Let’s go shopping for a bed soon. Maybe we can get it for your next birthday.”

  He was too tired to respond. I kissed him and put a light blanket on him. He was asleep before I left the room.

  “Lots going on,” Jack said. He had gone out and bought a pizza with everything possible on it, since neither one of us was up to cooking dinner. It smelled wonderful and we sat down to eat it, Jack sprinkling hot pepper flakes on his, as though the pepperoni wasn’t quite spicy enough for him.

  “You first, then. Almost everything I have is a maybe.”

  “The bad news is Joe Fox is getting antsy. It’s almost a week since Randy Collins was murdered and he’s got less than you have. He’s pushing hard for Sister Joseph to take a DNA test—give blood for it—and Arnold will have none of it.”

  “I’m with Arnold. If Joseph says she’s not Randy’s natural mother, she isn’t.”

  “Most of the world doesn’t share your assurance, dear wife.”

  I leaned over and gave him a kiss.

  “Yech,” he said. “Olive oil and mozzarella all over my face.”

  “Keep talking.”

  “And there’s the question of where Sister Joseph was last Sunday morning. I told you, Father Kramer says she wasn’t at mass.”

  “Then she was somewhere else at mass.”

  “I’m sure any sane judge in New York State will accept your opinion as fact.”

  “Jack, I don’t think people should have to expose their private lives because a cop can’t find a killer.”

  “Spoken like a true libertarian, but not very realistic. I have a feeling if she doesn’t acquiesce in the next couple of days, Fox is going to get a court order for a blood sample.”

  “Arnold will explode,” I said.

  “Maybe, but I think the court will grant it.”

  I chewed up the last of my pizza slice and took a long drink of Coke, into which I had squeezed a wedge of lemon. “You said that was the bad news. What’s the good news?”

  “The good news is that you’re home.”

  My heart sank. “That’s it?”

  “Hey, I’m walking on air. So’s Eddie. You’re home. What could be better?”

  “What am I going to do?” I said. “All I have is faint possibilities that someone else may have given birth to Randy. No admissions. Both women deny it emphatically.”

  “Start from the beginning.”

  I did. I went over the whole twenty-four-hours-plus that I spent in Ohio: including the visit to Mrs. DelBello; then to Abraham Fine at the insurance office; to Joseph’s sisters, Betty McCall and Hope McHugh; and then to Little B.

  “Sounds interesting, her relationship with her cousin.”

  “I have a close relationship with a first cousin, too.”

  “Not exactly the same thing.”

  “It was obviously a close family,” I said. “The sisters are close and the cousin was close. When B.G. went to the hospital, Joseph’s mother took in his young son.”

  “So you’ve ruled out Betty McCall.”

  “She was married and had two children the year that Joseph was home.”

  “Very unlikely she gave birth and no one noticed it.”

  “Very.”

  “But the other sister is a possible.”

  “Definitely, which doesn’t mean she’s the one. Her roommate swears she wasn’t pregnant.”

  “And who else?”

  I told him about my second visit to Fine and Houlihan just this morning and the three leads Jerry Houlihan had given me. The last thing on my list was my visit to Barbara Phillips.

  “Let me get this straight,” Jack said. “This is a woman who worked in the insurance office at the same time as Sister Joseph.”

  “Right.”

  “And while she was working there—this other woman—she got pregnant and left to have the baby.”

  “Right.”

  “Looks good to me.”

  “She says she had a boy.”

  “That’s a detail. I’ll bet she also told you she didn’t use the adoption agency that Randy came from.”

  “She said she had a lawyer.”

  “You get the name?”

  “She wouldn’t give it to me.”

  “It’s a nice circumstantial case. She mention the hospital she gave birth
in?”

  “She did before I started digging. It’s the same hospital.”

  “Lotta action in that hospital,” Jack said. “Chris, you looked at these women. Any of them look like they could be related to Randy?”

  “If you mean was one of them an older version of Randy, the answer is no. They all have medium to light coloring. Barbara Phillips had a washed-out look to her. Her hair seemed faded and there were strands of gray. Hope McHugh is probably the lightest of the bunch. Randy was fair. All of them are on the slim side. Barbara Phillips could have looked inside Joseph’s handbag when Joseph was in someone’s office and gotten a look at her driver’s license, birthdate, that kind of thing. And Hope was living at home most of the year that Joseph was there. So the same goes for her.” I took a deep breath. “It’s hard when you sit across from someone to imagine her being so duplicitous.”

  “That’s why we try to keep our distance, figuratively, at least. The problem is, it’s so circumstantial, I don’t see a judge requiring either of those women to submit to a blood test, especially if Sister Joseph doesn’t submit to one.”

  “So there we are. And pushing it one step further, I don’t see either of those women in Ohio flying to New York, buying a gun, coming to Oakwood, and shooting Randy. It’s almost silly when you think about it.”

  “Then maybe there’s no connection between who Randy’s mother is and who killed her.”

  “That’s what I think.”

  “Unless Sister Joseph is the mother.”

  “She isn’t,” I said firmly.

  There was a little pizza left to freeze for another day and I wrapped it in foil while Jack did the dishes. “Questions still unanswered,” I said. “Did Randy steal our ax? Did she chop down the Greiners’ tree? If she did, why on earth did she? And if she did, is it possible that someone in the Greiners’ house saw her do it and came out mad and shot her?”

  “It’s possible,” Jack said easily. “But where did the killer get the gun?”

  “I guess he could have stolen it from Mr. Kovak.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Go prove it,” I said. “Mr. Kovak says the gun was stolen but there’s no record that he reported it. His wife used to leave the back door open while she was out and lots of people knew it, including the Greiners. One of the Greiner kids could have gone in and taken it. But I’m just ranting and raving. I don’t want to find out that a killer lives on our street, still I desperately want to find the killer for Joseph’s sake.”