What the Fly Saw

by Frankie Y. Bailey

  “What note?” McCabe asked.

  “The note that was taped to the box.”

  “Was it handwritten?”

  “No, but I didn’t think anything of that. It sounded like it came from Olive. The note said I wasn’t to worry about what had happened the night before at the séance. And it said she would see me when she got back from New York City. She had said she was going down to the City to meet her old friend from her college days.”

  McCabe said, “That means the person who left the pie knew Ms. Cooper was going out of town.”

  “Must have. And saying she’d be in touch when she got back made sure I didn’t pick up my ORB to thank her.”

  “What’d you do with this note?” Baxter asked.

  Woodward furrowed her brow. “I think I left it there on the counter in the kitchen.”

  “We didn’t see it,” McCabe said.

  “Well, I don’t remember putting it away, but if you didn’t see it … I know I didn’t put it in the trash. So it must be there somewhere.”

  “Did anyone come by after you received the pie?” McCabe asked.

  “No, it was just me on my lonesome. And I was of two minds about that. It would have been nice to have somebody there when I started feeling so sick. But, on the other hand, sick as I felt and bad as I looked, I didn’t need anyone around me, pestering me.”

  “It would have been nice to have someone there when you opened the back door and passed out,” Baxter said.

  “You know I don’t even remember doing that. I could have froze to death if it had got real cold, lying there halfway out the door like that.”

  “So someone told you how you were found,” McCabe said.

  “The doctor, when he was telling me how lucky I was not to be dead.”

  “Very lucky,” McCabe said. “Let’s talk about the séance.”

  “What about it, honey?”

  “I have a brother,” McCabe said. “He’s a scientist. Detective Baxter and I had a chat with him about the various ways a bell might be made to levitate from a table.”

  Woodward held her gaze. “Honey, are you accusing me again of pulling a hoax?”

  “I’m saying we know how you might have done it. But the important thing here, Luanne, is that if you’re working some kind of scam, you may have created a problem for yourself. The person who killed Kevin Novak may think you really can communicate with the dead.”

  “You think whoever killed Kevin tried to kill me?”

  “That’s a possibility. So I think you’d make all our lives a lot easier if you tried telling us the truth about what you’re up to.”

  Woodward pressed her hands to each side of her face. “I guess you may be right. This isn’t working out quite the way I was hoping it would when I left North Carolina.”

  “So you didn’t just choose Albany by pointing your finger at your grandfather’s map,” Baxter said.

  “Well, that was just a little prettying up of the truth. I was in my granddaddy’s library when I decided I needed to make the trip. And I did look at the map. But I already knew where Albany was and that I was going to come here.”

  “Why?” McCabe asked.

  Woodward sighed. “I’m going to have to tell you a story to explain this. When I was a little girl, my daddy used to come up here to Albany. He didn’t go into the tobacco business with his daddy. Instead, he took this job with a munitions company, and for a while they had him coming up here just about every month for some kind of business deal they had going on with the military.”

  “And what does your father coming up to Albany have to do with what we’re discussing?”

  “I’m getting to that. I told you I’d have to tell you a story. Anyway, my daddy got old and sick, and Mama had died. He didn’t want to leave his house—wouldn’t even come and live with me in Granddaddy’s house. And he was so mean to ’em, we had a hard time keeping a nurse’s aide to stay with him. Then he got so sick he had to go back in the hospital. And he caught pneumonia in the hospital and died.” Luanne paused. “That’s when I found it. Or, at least, I found it after we’d buried him, and my sister and I were sorting through his things so we could sell his house.”

  McCabe said, “What was the ‘it’ that you and your sister found?”

  “It was just me that found it. I didn’t tell my sister. I decided I should find out what it was all about before I told her. My sister is sensitive, I guess you’d say. She doesn’t handle it well when things don’t go along the way she thinks they ought to.”

  “So what did you find that would have gotten her upset?” Baxter asked.

  “A folder I found in Daddy’s desk drawer. He’d always kept his desk locked, but when he died, I found the key on his key chain.”

  “What was in the folder?” McCabe asked.

  “A report from an investigator he’d hired back in 1972.”

  She paused, staring down at the blanket over her knees.

  Baxter said, “Are you going to tell us what was in the report?”

  Woodward looked up, and there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry to be dragging this out. But it’s hard to tell about losing the last little bit of respect you had left for your own daddy.”

  McCabe said, “Yes, I guess it would be. But you did say that it was time you told us this story.”

  “The report was about the child my father had hired the investigator to find. His mother had died, and my daddy wanted to know what became of the child.”

  McCabe said, “What happened to the child?”

  “He was in an orphanage. They hadn’t been able to find any next of kin, so they’d put him in an orphanage.”

  “Why did your father want to find this little boy?” McCabe asked.

  “That wasn’t in the report. But there was a picture in the drawer with the report. A photograph of a little boy, about a year or so old. And on the back of the photograph, someone—I’m guessing his mother—had written, ‘Your son. His name is Kevin.’”

  They were all silent for a moment. Then Baxter said, “Kevin Novak?”

  Woodward nodded. “He was my half brother. I think his mama asked my daddy for help when she knew she had cancer. Maybe he sent her some money, but given what the report said about how she and her child had been living, I doubt it. He sure didn’t do anything when he found out his son had been put in an orphanage. Just left him there.”

  “Was your mother still alive when he found out?” McCabe asked.

  “She was alive, but he wouldn’t have cared about hurting her feelings.”

  McCabe decided to leave that alone. “So you came here looking for your brother.”

  “Not looking for him. I knew where he was. I did what my daddy did and hired a PI. I was worried about how I was going to introduce myself. I didn’t want to pop up and say, ‘Howdy, I’m your sister.’” Woodward smiled. “And then I found out my brother was a funeral director, and I thought I had myself a good idea.”

  “What?” Baxter asked. “Coming here and seeing if he needed a medium?”

  “That didn’t come up until I got here and Olive was telling me about him. Like I said, I didn’t rush right up here. When I found out Kevin was a funeral director, I knew we had something in common.”

  “Dealing with the dead?” McCabe asked.

  “And both us being interested in folklore and superstition. I found this interview with him on the Web. He’d given this talk and this group had put it up. And he was talking about this discussion node he belonged to where he’d had this conversation with someone about premature burial. I knew about that discussion node, so I decided to join.” Luanne smiled. “That was how I met my own brother. On that node.”

  “When you say ‘met,’” McCabe said. “Did you introduce yourself?”

  “No, I just started chatting with him about different topics that came up on the node. Other folks were there, chatting, too. But I would comment whenever Kevin said something. And he started responding to what I said. It turn
ed out we had the same sense of humor. We had a chuckle or two together.”

  “Did he know you were a medium?”

  “I didn’t mention it.”

  “And after meeting him on the Web, you decided to come here and meet him in person.”

  “Yes, and I should have done it sooner. I knew something was going wrong with him.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “He stopped showing up on the node as much. At first, I assumed he was just busy. But when he did come back, it was like he’d just lost all his spirit. Like he was sunk in gloom and didn’t really care much anymore about what was being discussed.”

  “When did this happen?” McCabe asked.

  “He stopped logging in for a while back in September. I guess that would have been when his friend Bob died. But he didn’t say anything about it when he came back. He just wasn’t the same.”

  “‘Sunk in gloom,’ you said.”

  “I didn’t have to see him to know he was drooping over something.”

  “So this was an old-style discussion node,” Baxter said. “No visual contact.”

  “Or voice contact. Believe it or not, honey, some people enjoy it more when other folks don’t know how they look and sound. Just what they think. Leaves a whole lot more room for the imagination.”

  “Getting back to Kevin,” McCabe said.

  “I knew something was wrong. I decided to come up here and meet my brother and apologize for the way Daddy had treated him. But I never got any further than that afternoon at Olive’s celebration. She introduced us, and he took off running.”

  “Ms. Cooper introduced you to Kevin as a medium. Did you tell her anything about your relationship to Kevin?”

  Woodward shook her head. “I didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t even tell my own sister. I thought I had to tell Kevin himself first.”

  “But someone else may have found out,” McCabe said.

  “And tried to kill me because Kevin and I were kin? Why would anyone care about that?”

  “Right now, we have more questions than we have answers,” McCabe said. “We’d like to get back into your house again to look for the note that was attached to the box the pie came in.”

  “Well, honey, I didn’t have my key in my nightgown. Unless you brought it out with you—”

  “I did,” McCabe said. “We locked your door as we were leaving. We have your key secured at the station house.”

  “Then I guess you won’t have any trouble getting back in.”

  “We’ll also be checking with your neighbors to see if anyone happened to notice who left the pie on your doorstep.”

  “That’s fine with me. I want to know who wanted me dead. I want to know if it’s the same person who killed my brother before I’d even had a chance to know him.”

  Let’s hope it wasn’t your nephew, McCabe thought, thinking of Scott’s words before he tried to slash his own throat.

  35

  Tuesday, January 28, 2020

  8:43 A.M.

  McCabe turned from her monitor. “Research is going to see what they can find on Luanne’s father and his supposed connection to Kevin’s mother.”

  Baxter raised an eyebrow. “Did I miss something? I thought last night you were buying her story. We were talking about whether any of our suspects could have found out she was his half sister.”

  “I know we were. But I had time to sleep on it. And when I woke up this morning, I was thinking about how after lying to us with one elaborate story, she decided to volunteer a new one.”

  “Well, she did almost die. That might have affected her inclination to come clean. Especially after you pointed out the person who tried to kill her might still be out to get her.”

  “Yes, but didn’t you think there was something a bit off about—and I know people react in all kinds of ways to traumatic events. I’ve seen them do it. I understand she might have been trying not to fall apart. But there was something off about the way she talked about Kevin and his being her half brother.”

  “They had only met face-to-face once. She did have tears in her eyes at one point.”

  “Yes, and the tears looked real. But I still want to hear what Research finds.”

  “You’re a hard woman, McCabe.”

  “I just prefer not to believe any tale that I’m told without checking it out. Verify, Baxter.”

  “We could always ask her to take a DNA test.”

  McCabe stood up and reached for her ORB. “I wonder how she’d react to that request. Ready to go in and bring the lou up to speed, so we can head out to Luanne’s and look for that note?”

  “Right behind you,” Baxter said, pushing his chair away from his desk.

  * * *

  “Okay,” McCabe said as they stood in the living room of Luanne Woodward’s house. “Nothing in here. No note hidden in plain sight among the mail. So let’s divide up the rest of the rooms. I’ll do the bedroom and bathroom and you can do the kitchen and dining room.”

  “Hey, that’s sexist. Are you saying a male cop doesn’t know how to search a woman’s bedroom?”

  “No, I’m saying Luanne would probably rather not have you looking through her underwear drawer.”

  Baxter grinned. “Okay, so I’ve got kitchen duty. But you’ve got the john. I hope she wasn’t so delirious she used the note as toilet paper.”

  “And I hope,” McCabe said, “that was your last bathroom joke for the day.”

  “Just keeping it light.”

  In Luanne’s bedroom, McCabe started at the dresser and worked her way to the closet. No note under utilitarian cotton underwear and nightgowns. No note in coat or jacket pockets. Or in the nightstand that held a print Bible that looked old enough to be a family heirloom and, in a plastic protective envelope, an old pulp novel from the 1950s with a garish cover of a scantily dressed woman. Secret Desires was the title.

  McCabe took out her flashlight and looked under the bed. Then she checked under the pillows and finally felt under the mattress.

  It was revealing, McCabe thought, that Luanne had no objection to allowing police detectives to search her house. That would suggest she had nothing to hide. Or if she did have something to hide, it was nothing they would find by looking through her cabinets and drawers.

  “Anything, Mike?” McCabe asked as she walked back into the dining room.

  “Something kind of weird,” Baxter said.

  He had what looked like a scrapbook open on the table. “Found this over there in the china cabinet.”

  McCabe glanced at the cabinet, which contained only a few serving platters and a candelabrum. “It was inside?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “It looks like one of those family photo albums. My folks have some they inherited from one of my aunts.”

  “We’ve got some family albums, too,” McCabe said. “What’s weird about this one?”

  “Flip through it. You’ll see.”

  “Luanne mentioned that photo of Kevin when he was a toddler that his mother sent her father. But I don’t suppose she would have put it in the family album where her sister or other relatives might see it.”

  “Didn’t see it,” Baxter said.

  McCabe gave him a questioning glance and flipped back to the beginning of the album. The photos on the first few pages were in black and white, yellowed with age. From the style of the clothing, the early photos dated back to the 1920s or ’30s. Changing clothing styles marked the passing years. But there was one thing that remained consistent.

  “Cars,” McCabe said. “They’re all posing in front of, leaning against, sitting on or in a car. I guess Luanne decided to do a family album with a theme.”

  “Either that or they owned a car dealership. The last car in the most recent photo was manufactured in 2006.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” McCabe said. “But I don’t see anything that could help us.” McCabe was about to close the album when she stopped and flipped back to the first page. “Mike, did you check the b
acks of any of these photos? Remember Luanne said Kevin’s mother had written a note on the back of the photo she sent to Luanne’s father? People used to do that. I remember looking through the old albums that my mother inherited from her mother.”

  As she was speaking, McCabe was sliding the photos from their slots. “My grandmother had written captions for some of the photos in the beginning, but then she started just writing a note on the back and putting them in the album. If no one could remember who the people were in a photo, they would check the back.”

  Baxter pulled the album toward him and flipped to the middle. He took out several of the photos and glanced at the backs. “What do yours say?” he asked.

  McCabe read, “Carole Ann Simms, Died April 7, 1923.” She turned over another. “Jim Robinson. Died July 17, 1928. Here’s one from 1934. Same thing. A name and date of death.”

  “That’s what I’ve got. Name and date of death.”

  “The last names are different,” McCabe said. “But they could be branches of the family. Cousins.”

  “Or maybe Luanne has some weird thing about collecting photos of dead people with their cars.”

  McCabe felt the goose bumps rise on her arms. “Okay,” she said. “Luanne seems to have an odd hobby. Or maybe it’s not so odd for a medium. Maybe these are people she tried to contact. Maybe she always asks for a photo of the dearly departed with his or her car.”

  “We should ask her about that.”

  McCabe reached for the photos. “Meantime, let’s get these back in the album and go talk to the neighbors. Maybe someone saw something.”

  “If we’re lucky enough to catch anyone at home on a weekday morning.”

  McCabe turned toward the kitchen. “The refrigerator. You did look inside again?”

  “Sure. It was standing right there in front of me.”

  “Sorry, just wanted to make sure. My dad once tore his office up looking for the slip of paper that he’d written something on. Then he opened the refrigerator to make himself a sandwich and found it stuck to the carton of milk he’d taken out when he was having a cup of coffee.”

  Baxter said, “I checked everything in the refrigerator, including the food in the freezer. No note.”