The telephone jumped out from under Stewart’s chin, and he had to drop the knife and grab it before it hit the floor. “Wait a minute, I don’t think I heard you right. Did you say there’s a Lucille Jones who wants Jan to think that she—Lucille—is your daughter?”
“Yes.”
Stewart began to laugh. He couldn’t help it. “What does Jan say about this?” he managed after a bit.
“She says that Lucille got access to some of Jan’s hair and had a DNA test performed on it that seems to indicate they are siblings.”
That killed the amusement, stone dead, instantly. “Holy cow! So Jan believes her, then?”
“I don’t know if she still believes her, after the talking-to I administered. I think at least now she has some doubts. She likes this Lucille person. They’ve become firm friends. It is my opinion that Ms. Jones is a liar and a con artist. Jan asked me if I’d submit to a DNA test, and I said of course I would.”
“Can you pass it?”
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“All right, all right, calm down. I guess we ask because of what it means. If this woman can prove she’s your daughter—I don’t know how; can these things be rigged somehow?—if, as I said, she can prove she’s your daughter, then she’s going to cut herself a slice of Aunt Edyth’s fortune.”
“She can try, but she won’t succeed,” said Susan grimly. “If we do the test, I want it photographed, recorded, surveyed, supervised, and overseen by an attorney every step of the way. I won’t have a cuckoo in our nest. Not if I can prevent it.”
SERGEANT Rice was at lunch when his cell phone rang. He sighed and pulled it from a pocket. “Rice here,” he said.
It was a colleague from the Orono Police Department. “Sarge, you got two calls, one from a Ms. Devonshire at Crewel World in Excelsior; and the other, marked urgent, from one Stewart O’Neil. He’s very anxious that you should call him back right away.”
Rice took both numbers but finished his tuna on rye before choosing which one he’d call back first. “Mr. O’Neil?” he said, when the phone was answered. “Sergeant Mitchell Rice, Orono PD, here. Is there a problem?”
“Sergeant Rice, I’m glad you called me back so promptly!” came the genial voice. “I’ve got some interesting news for you. It’s about the case you’re working on, you know, the murder of Edyth Hanraty?”
“Yessir,” said Rice, preparing to be patient with a foolish citizen.
“Well, it seems there’s this woman in town—in Excelsior, really—who came up from Texas, came here on purpose to make the acquaintance of my niece, Jan Henderson, and she’s trying to convince Jan that she’s a long-lost sister, so she can cut herself in on the inheritance.”
Rice managed to confine himself to a snort of disbelief. Long-lost heirs already? Miss Hanraty was barely settled in her grave. Anyhow, claims like that were becoming rare with the advent of DNA testing. “What kind of story is she telling?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” said Stewart, “or not exactly. Something about transplanted genes and a test done on a stolen hair-brush. No, not transplanted, something else, some kind of trans thing. Anyway, this woman has that kind of genes and Jan has them, too, and she thinks that proves they’re sisters.”
“Is it possible?”
“Hell, no! I talked to my sister, and she says absolutely not. But it seems this woman believes it. She’s been up here for a couple of weeks, making friends with Jan. And she knows about Edyth being Jan’s great-aunt. I mean, that’s obviously the real reason she’s up here. Her name is Lucille Jones. Can you go talk to her?”
“Oh, yes, I am definitely going to go talk to her.”
Rice asked some more questions, thanked him, and hung up. So not some idiot who hadn’t heard about DNA, then. Some other kind of idiot. Or worse.
He called Betsy Devonshire next and was amused to find she had the same information to share with him. Better, she had the phone number where the Joneses were staying—they’d opted to rent a cottage.
So they’d been here for several weeks already and knew on arrival they’d be here a while—cottages were rented by the week or month, not by the day. They’d been here since before Edyth Hanraty had been murdered. So very likely, Stewart O’Neil was right—they knew before they got here about the wealthy old woman. Why else try the con?
But were they responsible for her death? That was the question.
THE cottage was one of four in a row set behind two ordinary houses on adjoining lots. They all were tiny, made of white boards with dark red trim around the doors and windows, but each had a different color door. The Joneses were staying in the cottage with a pale orange door, second from the one nearest the lake. The color reminded Lucille of Dreamsicles, her favorite summer treat when she was a child.
But she and Bobby Lee were not talking of Dreamsicles over lunch. “What if Jan’s mother won’t agree to a DNA test?” he asked.
“She will. There’s too much at stake for her not to agree.”
“What if it proves she’s not your mother?”
Lucille smiled. “I don’t see how that’s possible. There’s no one else in that family it could be.”
“Sure there is. Jan’s father.”
She considered that briefly while she nibbled on a potato chip—they were having chicken salad sandwiches, chips, and milk for lunch. “I suppose that could be,” she said. “But Jan told me her mother had the same problem bearing children, so the link is more likely through her. Though she did say she looks more like her dad than her mom.”
“Hell, I look more like my stepdad than my dad. I’m sorry to keep bringing up the negative, but I just can’t help thinking something is gonna go wrong here. It pretty generally does for us, you know.”
Lucille sighed. Bobby Lee was right—but things wouldn’t go wrong so often if they could just get ahead of the money flow. And they could get ahead if Bobby Lee would stay away from the casinos.
“Have you called to see if there’s a GA in the area?” Gamblers Anonymous meetings were everywhere. Bobby Lee was supposed to contact one up here—that was their agreement.
“Not yet,” he mumbled, and took a big bite of his sandwich.
She got up and went to the phone. “I’m going to call the landlady and tell her we’re leaving at the end of the week,” she said.
“Don’t do that!” he said, his words barely understandable around the mouthful of food. He stood, chewed fast, and swallowed hard. “You don’t want to do that,” he said, more clearly.
“No, of course I don’t.” She turned and saw the bright relief on his face. She erased it by saying, “But I will. This is much, much too important for you to mess it up by going on a gambling binge.”
“Darlin’, I promise, I’ll call them this afternoon.”
“No, you’ll call them right now.” He studied her for a few moments, and she let him see that this was not negotiable.
He wiped his fingers on his paper napkin, making a job of it while he looked at her, a smile slowly building on his face. Only when she began to smile back did he put the napkin down and go to gently push her aside and lift the receiver.
Because he was eager to get back into her good graces, he found a meeting starting in half an hour and so was gone when someone knocked. Lucille put her knitting down and opened the door to find a tall, stocky man with dark hair and a collar squeezed tight by a dark blue tie. He had a small leather folder in his hand that he flipped open to show a gold badge and photo ID. She felt her heart close in a grip as tight as his collar.
“Y-yes?” she faltered.
“My name is Sergeant Mitchell Rice, Orono Police. May I come in?”
“Is this about Bobby Lee?”
“Who is Bobby Lee?”
The look of relief on her face surprised him.
“I thought something had happened to my husband,” she explained. “We’re not used to the roads up here, all curving around that big lake—and the curves hidden by
big ol’ trees.”
He smiled. “I have friends who come up here from Arizona, and they say it’s like being suffocated in greenery up here.”
She smiled back. “Really? I like it. It feels right to me. My husband is more like your friends, I guess. Come in,” she added, stepping back.
As he did, he glanced around the small room, which featured walls and furniture in shades of tan with oxblood trim on the window frames. “Sad, isn’t it?” she said. “But rents up here are scary.”
“It gets better the farther from the cities you get,” he said.
“Well, we needed to be here, so here’s where we are.”
“Will your husband be back soon?”
“In an hour or so. He’s…at a meeting in Wayzata.”
He looked curious about her hesitation, but she held her tongue. Then he said, “I want to talk to you about Edyth Hanraty, Jan Henderson, and Susan McConnell.”
She had gathered that when he said Orono—that was where Edyth had lived. “All right. Won’t you sit down? Would you like something to drink? We have Coke in several flavors.”
“No, but thank you.”
“That chair over there isn’t too awful.” She pointed to one upholstered in a pale tan fabric, then went to the loveseat—the room was too small for a regular couch. It was upholstered in a tan buzz-cut fabric, with random curving lines carved into the nap. It made the backs of her legs itch, so she tucked one leg under her.
“What do you want to ask me?” she inquired.
“Let me get some basic information first,” he said, and pulled out his notebook, in which he wrote down her full name, date of birth, Dallas address, occupation.
“Why are you asking me all this?”
“Standard procedure.”
She doubted that but didn’t want to object. “You know Edyth Hanraty was murdered?” he asked.
“Yes, but what does that have to do with me?”
“I have information that you believe you are an heir to the Hanraty estate under the terms of her will.”
“Where did you hear that?” she asked sharply.
“So it’s not true?”
“Well, I’m not sure whether or not I’m an heir. I don’t know much about that part of things. I came up here—my husband and I came up here together—because I’m trying to find my birth parents. I’m adopted, you see. I saw Jan Henderson at a medical conference and, well, people thought we were twins or something, because we look so much alike, and I went home and started up my computer. The Internet is just wonderful for things like that. I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure, but we had some vacation coming, and so we came here. And Jan and I met at a knitting class, and it’s weird how many things we have in common, it’s like, you know, ‘twins separated at birth,’ except we aren’t twins, of course. I didn’t know anything about her aunt—her great-aunt, isn’t it?—until she told me. And I was so shocked when Jan said she’d been murdered, I just don’t understand how someone could do that! But now I don’t know what to do. I mean, should I just withdraw from this whole thing and go home, or what?”
Sergeant Rice rubbed his nose hard to hide a smile.
“I’m telling you the truth!” she said.
“I believe you,” he said sincerely. Now he was smiling openly.
“Well, then what’s got you so tickled?”
“Ma’am, I understand you are telling people you think you are Ms. Henderson’s sister.”
“I do—and so what?”
“Well, you might want to call me as a witness if anyone doubts your claim.”
Lucille couldn’t think what to make of that. “Why?”
“Because both you and Ms. Henderson tend to run off at the mouth when you’re feeling stressed.”
“Jan does that, too?” Lucille smiled broadly, she couldn’t help it. “You know, I just may ask you to be a witness,” she said.
He said, “Now, if I may continue: what is your husband’s full legal name?”
“Robert Lee Jones.”
She answered the same set of questions about Bobby Lee that Rice had asked about her. He was fifty-three, his address and phone were the same as hers, he was employed full-time as a nurse.
“He’s an RN?” Sergeant Rice asked.
“Yes,” she nodded. “A surgical nurse.”
He looked impressed and made a note. “Good for him! Does he like the work?”
“Yes. It’s stressful, but he really likes the way the surgeons rely on him.”
“You said you’re a lab tech. What kind of lab?”
“It’s called Advent Medical Laboratories. We do all kinds of medical tests.”
“Would that include DNA?”
“Oh, yes. We get samples from all over the country.”
“Do you perform some of these DNA tests yourself?”
Lucille smiled. She knew where he was going now. “Yes, I do.”
“Did you take, without her permission, a hairbrush from Jan Henderson?”
Put that way, it didn’t sound as much like a lark as she liked to think it was. “Yes,” she admitted.
“Did you subsequently perform or have performed a DNA test on some of the hair from that brush?”
“Yes. I had it performed by a friend at another lab.”
“Why did you do that?”
“I didn’t want my employer to know about it.”
“Why not?”
Worse and worse. Lucille almost broke into tears, but she didn’t, because this man didn’t look like the type to be moved by them. So she took a deep breath and told the truth. “Because I couldn’t afford to pay for the test. It’s an expensive one. My friend owed me a favor; I’ve done a couple of tests for her.”
Kindly, he didn’t flinch or frown. “What was the result of that test your friend performed?” he asked.
“First, there was nothing to show we couldn’t be sisters. Second, there was a translocation of two genes that matched identically a translocation I have. That doesn’t prove we’re sisters—you can’t do that with DNA. But one result of the particular translocation we share is a problem carrying babies to term. Both she and I had that problem—and so did her mother and grandmother. So this is not a new translocation—it’s something handed down several generations. It’s not perfect proof, but it’s pretty indicative.”
“But a test of Mrs. McConnell could prove she’s your mother.”
“Yes.”
“Have you asked her to submit to a test?”
“Not yet. Jan said she would talk to her.”
He made another note. “Did you ever meet Edyth Hanraty?”
“No.”
“Did you try?”
“No. By the time I found out about her, she was…dead.”
“Did you murder her?”
Even though she half-expected the question, it shocked her. “No!”
He made a lengthy note, then in an abrupt segue, he asked, “Do you knit?”
She said “yes” before she noticed he was looking at the ball of yarn on the cushion beside her. What, did he think Bobby Lee was a knitter? That sent a whole cascade of possibilities tumbling down the corridors of her mind.
“Have you ever knitted with very thin needles?”
Oh, that. She said, too quickly, “I tried it one time, but a few minutes of trying told me I don’t have the eyes for it. That was four or five years ago, and I don’t even know what I did with the needles.” The laugh she forced after that statement sounded even more phony, so to steady her nerves, she resorted to good manners. “Are you sure I can’t get you a Coke or something?”
“No, thank you.” He again consulted his notebook. “How did you find out the name of this mysterious ‘twin’ at the medical conference?”
“Her name tag. We all wore name tags.”
“I thought you were afraid to approach her.”
“I didn’t have to come all that close. They gave us these huge tags in big square holders we wore around our necks
on elastic cords. Big black lettering, name and hometown, an inch high.”
He nodded and made a note. “How did you find out you were adopted?”
“I didn’t know until very recently, when my mother died. I’d lost my father ten years earlier, so when my mother died, we had to go through her papers and things, get the house ready to sell and all, and I found some documents that revealed the adoption. I was born in St. Paul—or rather, I was abandoned at a hospital in St. Paul by my birth mother. That was in 1959, when it was still a shameful thing to have a baby out of wedlock. Or maybe she died, and my father couldn’t care for me, so he brought me to the hospital. Whoever did it didn’t leave a name. So when I learned about this woman from Minnesota who looked a whole lot like me, well, naturally I was curious.”
“So curious you stole her hairbrush and had a DNA test performed on it.”
She nodded. “That’s right. That’s not weird when you think about it. You’ve heard the saying, ‘when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’?”
He nodded.
“So I know DNA. Nowadays, when someone wants to know for sure if he’s the daddy, the first thing they do is run a DNA test. So I find out I’m adopted, and I see someone who looks a lot like me, I want to walk up and run a swab around the inside of her mouth. I couldn’t do that, so I took her hairbrush.”
“You were very determined to do the test.”
“Yes, it was like God had given me this great big hint, and I wasn’t going to just ignore it.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“Sure. Oh, and I think the fact that she’s in the medical field like I am encouraged me to think she’s related to me. That sort of thing runs in families, too.”
“Too?”
“Like being in law enforcement. We—my husband and I—know this guy, Lenny Marx. He’s a cop in Houston, and his dad’s a state trooper, and his brother’s a deputy down at the jail. His granddad was a Texas Ranger, and his great-grandfather was sheriff of Kaufman County. This guy says that’s really common.”
“He’s right. It is.”
“Well, Jan’s grandfather was a doctor, one of her sons is taking pre-med courses, and one of her nieces wants to be a nurse. No one in my adopted family was into medicine, but it’s all I ever wanted to do, and my daughter is going to be a veterinarian.”
Sins and Needles Page 16
