by Sue Grafton
The groom didn't seem that distressed. He simply matched his pace to hers, his gaze pinned on her shuffling feet. "You're not breathing right," he said crossly.
The clerk turned to us. "What can I do for you folks?"
Dietz was still staring off at the departing couple with a look of uneasiness.
I held out the copy of the birth certificate. "I wonder if you can help us," I said. "We suspect maybe this birth certificate's been tampered with and we'd like to check for the original in Sacramento. Is there any way you can do that? I notice there are some file numbers."
The clerk held the paper at arm's length, her thumbnail moving from point to point across the document. "Well, here's your first problem right here. You see that district number? That's incorrect. This says Brawley on the face of it, but the district number's off. Imperial County would be thirteen something. This fifty-nine fifty indicates Santa Teresa County."
"It does? That's great," I said. "You mean you'll have a copy of it here?"
"Oh sure. That little two in the margin tells you the book number and this number here is the page. Just a minute and I'll have someone pull the microfilm. Machines are right through there. You just have a seat and someone will be with you directly."
We waited maybe five minutes and then the second clerk, June, appeared with a microfilm cartridge, which she loaded into the machine.
Once we located the page, it didn't take us long to find Irene's name. Dietz was right. The date and time of birth and the physician's name were the same on both documents. Irene's name, the ages of both parents, and her mother's occupation were also the same. Everything else had been altered.
Her father's name was Patrick Bronfen, his occupation car salesman. Her mother's first name was Sheila, maiden name Farfell.
"Who the hell is this?" I said with disbelief. "I thought her mother's name would be Anne."
"Isn't Sheila the name Agnes mentioned to the cop who brought her into emergency?"
I turned around and stared at him. "That's right. I'd forgotten."
"If it's true, it might imply that Agnes and Sheila are the same person."
I made a face. "Sure shoots our Bronte theory. But hey, check this." I pointed to the screen. The address listed was the same one given for Emily Bronfen, whose death had occurred ten years before Irene's birth – fourteen years before the tea set had been packed away in the box. I found myself squinting, trying to make sense of it. Dietz seemed equally mystified. What the hell was this?
Chapter 24
* * *
We paid eleven dollars and waited another ten minutes for a certified copy of Irene's birth certificate. I didn't think she'd believe us unless she saw it for herself. As we left the Hall of Records, I paused briefly at the counter, where the clerk who had helped us was sorting through a pile of computer forms.
"Do you have a city map?" I asked.
She shook her head. "The docent might have one at the information booth around the corner on the first floor," she said. "What street are you looking for? Maybe I can help."
I showed her the address on the birth certificate. "This says eleven oh-seven Sumner, but I've never heard of it. Is there such a street?"
"Well, yes, but the name was changed years ago. Now it's Concorde."
"Concorde used to be Sumner?" I said, repeating the information blankly. News to me, I thought. And then I got it. I lowered my head for a moment. "Dietz, that's what Agnes was talking about in the emergency room. She didn't say 'it used to be summer.' She was saying 'Sumner.' That's where the nursing home is. She knew the street."
"Sounds good," Dietz said. He took me by the elbow and we pushed through the double doors, heading back to the public garage where his car was parked.
We were getting close to the answer and I was beginning to fly. I could feel my brain cells doing a little tap dance of delight. I was half-skipping, excitement bubbling out of me as we crossed the street. "I love information. I love information. Isn't this great? God, it's fun..."
Dietz was frowning in concentration as he scanned the walkway between the library and the parking structure, unwilling to be distracted from his assessment of the situation. We reached the three-story garage and started climbing the outside stairs.
"What do you think the story is?" he finally asked as we passed the second landing. I was straggling behind him, working hard to keep up. For a man who'd only quit smoking four days before, he was in remarkable shape.
"I don't know yet," I said. "Patrick could have been a brother. They lived at the same address. The point is, Emily did die in the earthquake just like Agnes said. Or at least that's how it looked..."
"But what's it got to do with Irene Gersh? She wasn't even born then."
"I haven't figured that part out yet, but it has to fit. I think she witnessed an act of violence. It just wasn't Emily. Let's go to eleven oh-seven Concorde and see who lives there. Maybe we can get a line on this Bronfen guy."
"Don't you want to go talk to Irene about it first?"
"No way. She's too stressed out. We can fill her in afterwards."
I arrived at the top level of the structure, heart pounding, out of breath. One of these days, I was going to have to start jogging again. Amazing how quickly the body tends to backslide. When we reached the car, I shifted impatiently from foot to foot while Dietz went through his inspection routine with the Porsche, checking the doors first for any signs of a booby trap, peering at the engine, the underside of the chassis, and up along the wheel mounts. Finally, he unlocked the door on my side and ushered me in. I leaned across the driver's seat and unlocked his door for him.
He got in and started up the engine. "Lay you dollars to doughnuts, there's nobody left. If this traumatic event took place in January nineteen forty, you're talking more than forty years ago. Whatever happened, all the principal players would be a hundred and ten... if any were alive."
I held my hand out. "Five bucks says you're wrong."
He looked at me with surprise and then we shook hands on the bet. He glanced at his watch. "Whatever we do, let's be quick about it. Rochelle Messinger's due up here in an hour."
Pulling out of the parking structure, he cut over one block and headed left on Santa Teresa Street. Concorde was only nine blocks north of the courthouse, the same quiet tree-lined avenue Clyde Gersh and I had walked yesterday in our search for Agnes. Unless I was completely off, this had to be an area she recognized. Certainly, it was the address given for Emily Bronfen at the time of her death. It was also the house where Irene's parents resided at the time of her birth ten years later.
Dietz turned right onto Concorde. The nursing home was visible above the treetops, half a block away. I was watching house numbers march upward toward the eleven-hundred mark, my gut churning with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Please let it be there, I thought. Please let us get to the bottom of this...
Dietz slowed and pulled into the curb. He turned the engine off while I stared at the house. It was right next door to the place where Mark Messinger had caught up with me and sprayed the porch with gunfire.
I held a hand out to Dietz without even looking at him. "Pay up," I said, gaze still pinned on the three-story clapboard house. "I met Bronfen yesterday. I just figured out how I know him. He turned the place into a board-and-care. I met him once before when a friend of mine was looking for a facility for her sister in a wheelchair." I saw a face appear briefly at a second-floor window. I opened the car door and grabbed my handbag. "Come on. I don't want the guy to scurry out the back way."
Dietz was right behind me as we pushed through the shrieking iron gate and went up the front walk, taking the porch steps two at a tune. "I'll jump in if you need me," he murmured. "Otherwise, you're the boss."
"You may be the only man I ever met who'd concede that without a fight."
"I can't wait to see how you do this."
"You and me both." I rang the bell. The owner took his sweet time about answering. I really hadn't even fo
rmulated what I meant to say to him. I could hardly pretend to be doing a marketing survey.
He opened the door, a heavyset man in his seventies, diffuse light shining softly on his balding pate. It was strange how different he looked to me. Yesterday, his elongated forehead had lent him a babylike air of innocence. Today, the furrowed brow suggested a man who had much to worry him. I had to make a conscious effort not to stare at the mole on his cheek. "Yes?"
"I'm Kinsey Millhone. Do you remember me from yesterday?"
His mouth pulled together sourly. "With all the gun battles going on, it'd be hard to forget." His gaze shifted. "I don't remember this gent."
I tilted a nod at Dietz. "This is my partner, Robert Dietz."
Dietz reached past me and shook hands with Bronfen. "Nice to meet you, sir. Sorry about all the uproar." He put his left hand behind his ear. "I don't believe I caught your name."
"Pat Bronfen. If you're still looking for that old woman, I'm afraid I can't help. I said I'd keep an eye out, but that's the best I can do." He moved as though to close the door.
I held a finger up. "Actually, this is about something else." I took the birth certificate from my handbag and held it out to him. He declined to take it, but he scanned the face of it. His expression shifted warily when he realized what it was. "How'd you get this?"
The inspiration came to me in a flash. "From Irene Bronfen. She was adopted by a couple in Seattle, but she's instituted a search for her birth parents."
He squinted at me, but said nothing.
"I take it you're the Patrick Bronfen mentioned on her birth certificate?"
He hesitated. "What of it? "
"Can you tell me where I might find Mrs. Bronfen?"
"No, ma'am. That woman left me more than forty years ago, and took Irene with her," he said, with irritation. "I never knew what happened to the child, let alone what became of Sheila. I didn't even know she put the child up for adoption. Nobody told me the first thing about it. That's against the law, isn't it? If I wasn't even notified? You can't sign someone's child away without so much as a by-your-leave."
"I'm not really sure about the legalities," I said. "Irene hired me to see what I could find out about you and your ex-wife."
"She's not my ex-wife. I'm still married to the woman in the eyes of the law. I couldn't divorce her if I didn't know where she was." He gestured impatiently, but he was running out of steam and I could see his mood shift. "That wasn't Irene, sitting on my front porch steps yesterday, was it?"
"Actually, it was."
He shook his head. "I can't believe it. I remember her when she was this high. Now she'd have to be forty-seven years old." He stared down at the porch, brow knitting parallel stitches between his eyes. "My own baby girl and I didn't recognize her. I always thought I'd be able to pick her out of a crowd."
"She wasn't well. You really never got a good look at her," I said. He looked up at me wistfully. "Did she know who I was?"
"I'm sure she didn't. I didn't realize it myself until a little while ago. The certificate says Sumner. It took us a while to realize the address was still good."
"I'm surprised she didn't recognize the house. She was almost four when Sheila took her. Used to sit right there on the steps, playing with her dollies." He shoved his hands in his pockets.
It was occurring to me that Irene's asthma attack might well have been generated by an unconscious recognition of the place. "Maybe some of the memories will come back to her once she knows about you," I said.
His eyes had come back to mine with curiosity. "How'd you track me down?"
"Through the adoption agency," I said. "They had her birth certificate on file."
He shook his head. "Well, I hope you'll tell her how much I'd like to see her. I'd given up any expectation of it after all these years. I don't suppose you'd give me her address and telephone number."
"Not without her permission," I said. "In the meantime, I'm still interested in finding Mrs. Bronfen. Do you have any suggestions about where I might start to look?"
"No, ma'am. After she left, I tried everything I could think of – police, private investigators. I put notices in the newspapers all up and down the coast. I never heard a word."
"Do you remember when she left?"
"Not to the day. It would have been the fall of nineteen thirty-nine. September, I believe."
"Do you have any reason to think she might be dead?"
He thought about that briefly. "Well, no. But then I don't have any reason to think she's still alive either."
I took a small spiral-bound notebook from my handbag and leafed through a page or two. I was actually consulting an old grocery list, which Dietz studied with interest, looking over my shoulder. He gave me a bland look. I said, "The adoption agency mentions someone named Anne Bronfen. Would that be your sister? The files weren't clear about the connection. I gathered she was listed as next-of-kin when the adoption forms were filled out."
"Well now, I did have a sister named Anne, but she died in nineteen forty... three or four months after Sheila left."
I stared at him. "Are you sure of that?"
"She's buried out at Mt. Calvary. Big family plot on the hillside just as you go in the gate. She was only forty years old, a terrible thing."
"What happened to her?"
"Died of childbed fever. You don't see much of that anymore, but it sometimes took women in those days. She married late in life. Some fellow named Chapman from over near Tucson. Had three little boys one right after the other, and died shortly after she was delivered of her third. I paid to bring her back. I couldn't believe she'd want to be buried out in that godforsaken Arizona countryside. It's too ugly and too dry."
"Is there any possibility she might have heard from Sheila in those few months?"
He shook his head. "Not that she ever told me. She was living in Tucson at the time Sheila ran off. I suppose Sheila might have gone to her, but I never heard of it. Now, how about you answer me one. What happened with that old woman who wandered off from the nursing home? You never said if she turned up or not."
"Actually she did, about eleven o'clock last night. The police picked her up right out here in the street. She died in the emergency room shortly afterward."
"Died? Well, I'm sorry to hear that."
We went through our good-bye exercises, making appropriate noises.
Walking back to the car, Dietz and I didn't say a word. He unlocked the door and let me in. Once he eased in on his side, we sat in silence. He looked over at me. "What do you think?"
I stared back at the house. "I don't believe he was telling the truth."
He started the car. "Me neither. Why don't we check out the gravesite he was talking about?"
Chapter 25
* * *
They were all there. It was eerie to see them – Charlotte, Emily, and Anne – their gravestones lined up in date order, first to last. The markers were plain; information limited to the bare bones, as it were. Their parents, the elder Bronfens, were buried side by side: Maude and Herbert, bracketed on the left by two daughters who had apparently died young. Adjoining those plots, there was an empty space I assumed was meant for Patrick when the time came. On the other side were the three I knew of: Charlotte, born 1894, died in 1917; Emily, born 1897, died in 1926; and Anne, who was born in 1900 and died in 1940.
I stared off down the hill. Mt. Calvary was a series of rolling green pastures, bordered by a forest of evergreens and eucalyptus trees. Most of the gravestones were laid flat in the ground, but I could see other sections like this one, where the monuments were upright, most dating back to the late nineteenth century. The heat of the afternoon sun was beginning to wane. It wouldn't be dark for hours yet, but a chill would settle in as it did every day. A bird sang a flat note to me from somewhere in the trees.
I shook my head, trying to make the information compute.
Dietz had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, but his look said "What?" as clearly as if
he'd spoken.
"It just makes no sense. If Sheila Bronfen and Agnes Grey are the same person, then why don't their ages line up right? Agnes couldn't have been seventy when she died. She was eighty-plus. I know she was."
"So the two aren't the same. So what? You came up with a theory and it didn't prove out."
"Maybe," I said.
"Maybe, my ass. Give it up, Millhone. You can't manipulate the facts to fit your hypothesis. Start with what you know and give the truth a chance to emerge. Don't force a conclusion just to satisfy your own ego."
"I'm not forcing anything."
"Yes, you are. You hate to be wrong –"
"I do not!"
"Yes, you do. Don't bullshit me –"
"That has nothing to do with it! If the two aren't the same, so be it. But then, who was Agnes Grey and how'd she end up with Irene Bronfen?"
"Agnes might have been a cousin or a family friend. She might have been the maid..."
"All right, great. Let's say it was the maid who ran off with the little girl. How come he didn't tell us that? Why pretend it was his wife. He's convinced Sheila took the child, or else he's lying through his teeth, right?"
"Come on. You're grasping at straws."
I sank down on my heels, pulling idly at the grass. My frustration was mounting. I'd felt so close to unraveling the knot. I let out a puff of air. I'd been secretly convinced Agnes Grey and Anne Bronfen were one and the same. I wanted Bronfen to be lying about Anne's death, but it looked like he was telling the truth – the turd. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dietz sneak a look at his watch.
"Goddamn it. Don't do that," I said. "I hate being pushed." I bit back my irritation. "What time is it?" I said, relenting.
"Nearly four. I don't mean to rush you, but we gotta get a move on."
"The Ocean View isn't far."
He clammed up and stared off down the hill, probably stuffing down a little irritation of his own. He was impatient, a man of action, more interested in Mark Messinger than he was in Agnes Grey. He bent down, picked up a dirt clod, and tossed it down the hill. He watched it as if it might skip across the grass like a pebble on water. He shoved his hands in his pockets. "I'll wait for you in the car," he said shortly and started off down the hill.
