by Tom Purcell
Sandy smiled and bowed and nearly tripped as she left the stage. She buttoned up her girls and thanked me. I walked them to her car and helped buckle the girls into the back seat.
Sandy looked up to me. Her eyes were burning so bright, I thought she was going to explode. She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek, and then got into the car — a beat up old Toyota — and drove off.
She came back the next Sunday and the Sunday after that. It became routine for me to let her in the back door with the girls, so they didn’t have to wait in line in the cold. I’d let her sing two or three songs and send the pub into a frenzy. Then I’d walk her to her car afterwards and get my kiss on the cheek.
The following Sunday I met her husband.
He waited at her car. He had greasy blond hair and hadn’t shaved in a few days. He held a near-empty fifth of whiskey in his right hand, while leaning against the car to keep himself upright.
“This where you been goin’?” he said, then drained the last of his bottle.
“Cody,” she said, fire in her eyes. “You’re drunk. Just leave.”
The girls hugged Sandy’s legs.
“Who’s this?” he said, pointing to me. “Your new boyfriend? Or maybe your girlfriend?”
He laughed as though that was the funniest thing he ever said.
I felt the anger well up inside of me. He had a good four inches on me — a big man of 6’3 or more — but he had no idea how much danger he was in. I moved toward him.
“Sean, no, please,” she said, putting her arm out to stop me.
He moved quickly. He swung the bottle against the side of Sandy’s head and she went down hard. He moved closer to kick her but I slammed him in the nose with a hard left that sent him sprawling, then grabbed the back of his head with my right hand and bounced it off the hood of the car, causing him to fall onto his back.
The girls dove onto their mother, crying. I knelt by her. I felt the bump on her temple. Blood was everywhere.
“It’s OK, Sean,” she said. “It’s OK.”
Her husband got up and stumbled off laughing, blood running pouring from his nose.
“There’s more of that waiting for you back home,” he said.
Sandy refused to go to the hospital, so we treated her cuts back at the pub. I offered to let her and the girls to stay in my apartment above the pub, but she declined. I offered to have a talk with her husband, but she refused that, too.
She returned the following Sunday. Despite the bandage on the side of her head, I didn’t say a word about what happened the week before. She sat in the booth by the hearth shuffling through a manila folder. She was so consumed with her music, she didn’t see me approaching. As she got up from the booth we collided. Her music sheets scattered all over the floor.
I felt awful and helped her pick the sheets up. As I did, I could see she’d written music bars on regular notebook paper using a pencil. Every line was written with the care of a master musician.
I remember the names of some of the songs. One was titled “Drunken Daddy.” Another was titled “Diner Waitress Blues.” I think another was “No Matter Your Dad, Momma Will Always Love You.” There were several others, but I couldn’t remember all of them. It took her 15 minutes to get them back in order.
Over the next few weeks, Sandy introduced more songs — each more moving and beautiful than the one before it. She sang of a mother worried about her girls’ future, terrified their lives would be as hard as hers. She sang of holding onto dreams despite poverty, fear and doubt.
We had to turn patrons away on the final night of the contest. Sandy wore a black silk dress. She wore makeup for the first time, and now she was off-the-charts gorgeous — a real star in the making. She even dressed the twins in matching outfits.
When I introduced her, the pub went wild, then got deadly quiet. We all thought she’d perform one of the songs she had practiced, but not Sandy. No, she started off with a new song. It was called “Birthday Love.” It was about two little girls who loved their daddy unconditionally, despite his drug abuse and drinking. Every year he promised them a special gift for their birthday. Every year they waited and he never showed.
As you can guess by now, the applause was longer and deeper than ever. Sandy won the pub contest hands down. All of us eagerly awaited her Steel Sports TV performance — we all hoped and prayed the judges in attendance would grant her a recording contract that would send her on her way.
It was the next day that she called me, frantic. She’d gotten into a fight with her husband. He ran off with the girls. She went looking for them everywhere and came to me to help find them.
Why come to me, a pub owner, for help?
Because I am a private eye. In a past life, I’d been a distinguished homicide detective for Pittsburgh’s Major Crimes Unit. During my 11 years there, I achieved the highest solve percentage of any homicide detective in the city’s history.
Why’d I resign to take over my family’s pub? I’ll give you the short version.
My Uncle Mick offered me the pub to help me get through a tragic time — one that claimed the life of my wife, Lauren, who died when an arsonist I’d put away years before made good on his threats. He burned down our house while Lauren was asleep — while I was working late, as usual.
When I found him, it took everything I had not to put a bullet between his eyes. I quit as soon as he was in custody, then promptly went to pieces, drinking hard daily to numb the pain and guilt that hangs over me still. It was only through the grace of God, and the support of my family and friends that I made it through that dark spell.
In any event, Sandy knew I was a private eye, and I was more than happy to help her.
She lived in a run-down trailer park 12 miles south of the city. I sat across from her in her small kitchen. Unlike the rest of the trailer park — surrounded by abandoned appliances, cars and other assorted junk — the inside of Sandy’s trailer was tasteful and well kept.
“How long have they been gone?” I said.
“He left sometime last night. They were gone when I woke this morning.”
“He’s done this often?”
“Yes, many times.”
“Where did he take the girls in the past?”
“His mother’s. She always covers for him.”
“You call her?”
“She says she doesn’t know where he is.”
“He have a job?”
“No.”
“Any friends or places he might be?”
“He’s a regular at Bobby’s Tavern. I stopped in there, but nobody would talk to me.”
“You call the police?”
“Yes, but they know us all too well. They said he’ll bring the girls back when his drunk wears off — that I should call back if he isn’t back with the girls within 48 hours.”
I went to Cody’s mother’s house, a modest ranch home in an old mining town 20 miles south of Pittsburgh. No one was home. The door was unlocked. I let myself in. There was no sign that he or the girls had been there. But when I played the answering machine, I heard his voice.
“Ma, I got the girls down here at Bobby’s and my buddy Jimmy here has a little cabin. We’re gonna head up there for a little while.”
I Googled “Bobby’s Tavern” on my phone, located the address and drove there. I walked into that dark, smoky dump and shouted “Hey, Jimmy.” One fellow turned around. He was small and drunk. Two free drinks was all that it took to get directions to his cabin.
It was located an hour up Rt. 40 in the mountains just beyond Uniontown. I put the truck into four-wheel drive and headed up a snow-covered back road. I drove a ways before I finally saw the cabin. I pulled in front and got out.
I could hear a television playing inside. I knocked. No one answered. I turned the knob and the door opened. The gas burner on the stove was set to high, probably the only source of heat. There were coloring books and crayons on the floor, a couple of dolls. Crushed beer cans were scattered about
the room. That’s when I began to worry.
I walked outside and looked across the property. There was a small woodshed 50 feet away — with one set of footprints in the snow leading to it.
I found Cody behind the shed, the back of his head blown off. His eyebrows and hair were covered with frost, his clothing frozen solid. Blood was splattered across the shed. A shotgun lay by his side next to an empty bottle of whiskey, a syringe and seven torn stamp bags that had contained heroin.
But where were the girls?
I jogged back to the cabin, looking for small footprints in the snow. I saw several matted prints in front of the shed next to tire tracks — probably from the girls and their father exiting the car and walking into the cabin?
Where was the car?
I followed the tire tracks down the road toward a pond. I saw something shiny in the center of the pond. As I walked toward it, my heart sank. My walk turned into a jog, then an all-out sprint.
I was 50 feet away when I saw the bumper of the car sticking just above the surface of the partially frozen water. As I got closer I saw the tip of a license plate.
I took off my coat and pants and boots and dove into the ice-cold water. I held my breath and dove down to the passenger side window and looked inside.
Madeline and Matilda were strapped into their seatbelts in the back seat. Their eyes were open, their skin was pale blue.
I pulled myself out of the pond, got down on my knees and began to cry.
The police found a note in Cody Smith’s pocket. It had been written and printed on an old computer in the cabin. He wrote that he’d been high and drunk and forgot to put the car’s emergency brake on. He loaded the girls in to go to the store, but went back into the cabin to retrieve his wallet. When he came out, the beat-up Toyota was rolling down the road toward the pond — it popped into gear on its own. He tried to save the girls, but the water was cold. He couldn’t get to them in time. He said he was so distraught, he was going to shoot up the last of his heroin and take his own life. He apologized to Sandy and his mother and asked God’s forgiveness.
As you can imagine, Sandy had no desire to go to sing on television the following Saturday. She had to arrange the funeral. We took up a collection at the pub to cover all the burial costs and the turnout at the viewing was sizable.
Everyone who ever performed on Talent Night came to pay respects. And as we looked down at those beautiful twin girls, lying in side-by-side coffins, there was not a dry eye in the place.
After the funeral, we had a reception at the pub. Sandy was quiet all week long. But we all knew what needed to be done. Sandy had to perform. She had to do it for her girls. We finally persuaded her to do so.
The next Saturday at the pub, we turned on Steel Town Sports. The broadcaster told the story of Sandy winning the Talent Night contest at the pub and we cheered. When he talked about the tragedy of Madeline and Matilda, the sold-out crowd grew deadly silent.
As Sandy walked onto the stage, she looked radiant. She was dressed to the nines again and in a gown that would make Shania Twain look like a rag doll. Sandy approached the mic gently. All she said was this: “I call this song ‘Bittersweet Lullaby.’ It is dedicated to my daughters, Madeline and Matilda.”
The song told of two little girls who, through no fault of their own, were born into an abusive marriage. She said that despite the awful tragedy that took them, the only thing that keeps her going is her belief that they finally had found peace in a better place, a peace that she was never able to give them.
When she finished the song, our patrons went wild — but her song hit me harder than anyone.
Sandy came to the pub after her performance. She sat across from me in my favorite booth. It was still cold outside, but I didn’t light a fire. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything.
“The record label gave me a contract,” she said, excitedly. “They want to record several of my songs. They want to schedule concert appearances all over the region.”
She expected me to congratulate her, but I didn’t.
“I have such a mix of emotions rifling through me, Sean,” she said. “I miss my girls desperately. How is it that the worst thing in the world could happen to me the same week the best thing in the world could happen?”
“I think you know,” I said. “How could you kill those beautiful little girls?”
The happiness drained out of her face.
“I figure you found your husband high and drunk passed out behind the shed. You shot him with his own gun. You were careful to conceal your footsteps in the snow by walking in his. Then you doused his clothes with pond water. That was easy enough.
But the girls? What did you tell them? What does a mother say before she straps her daughters into a car, puts the transmission in drive and watches them drown a slow death in ice-cold pond water?”
She began crying — a deep agonizing cry that made me pity her.
She confessed to the murders. She told the police she did it to save her girls from this terrible world.
I will never understand how anyone could hurt Madeline and Matilda, but I’ll let God be Sandy’s judge.
How did I know Sandy was the killer, you ask?
It goes back to the Sunday night when I knocked her music sheets onto the floor.
Like I said, I didn’t remember the names of all the songs I saw scattered there, but the night she performed on television it hit me like a bolt of lightning.
“Bittersweet Lullaby” was one of the titles on the floor.
She wrote it before she murdered her daughters.
Copyright Information
Bittersweet Lullaby: Two Sean McClanahan Mystery Shorts
Copyright 2015: Thomas J Purcell Jr.
The right of Thomas J Purcell Jr. to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.
