When she answered our knock, a different fragrance greeted us, that of hot apple pie. “Come on in, come on in,” she said, taking an apron off.
Despite the fact that she loves to bake, she has always been slender.
That night she was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and running shoes. Her hair was in a single neat, thick gray braid, and she was wearing her favorite jewelry-a squash-blossom necklace and turquoise-and-silver earrings.
She carelessly set the apron aside and gave me a big hug as I walked in. Frank got a hug, too, but she held on to him as she stepped back and looked him over. She made a clucking noise and said, “Irene, you are starving my favorite nephew.”
“No, she’s not-” he began, but she interrupted.
“Pie will be ready in about fifteen minutes,” she said. “Have a seat in here. Too hot in the kitchen.”
“I thought you said the pie was already made,” I said.
“Well, maybe I did, but what I meant to say was that if you’d come over, I’d make one.”
“But you must have had the ingredients on hand,” I persisted.
“Yes, Miss Smarty, I did. And since I know how that mind of yours works, yes, I knew that sooner or later you would be coming by, and if you were-well, now, I couldn’t have you bring this big fellow and not offer him anything to eat, now could I? Have a seat, I said.”
We sat.
“Going to extremes, aren’t you?” I said.
“What? Making an apple pie?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“No wonder you’re off your feed, Frank. Pushy and uppity, isn’t she? Here I am, offering my hospitality, and she wants to proceed at her pace, do things her way.”
“Can’t imagine where she gets that from,” Frank said.
She looked taken aback for a moment, then laughed. “Ah, you should come to see me more often, you two. Can I get either one of you something to drink?”
With that she took charge again, and warned off, I bided my time. She focused her attentions on Frank, asking him about his plans for his summer garden, which took the two of them into a rather detailed discussion of planting methods for vegetable gardens. Apparently, there would be no talk of cemeteries until she was good and ready to bring the subject up. I knew her well enough not to try to coax it out of her. If Mary had decided that we owed her three or four visits before she would tell me who was buried next to my mother, that’s how long I’d have to wait.
As it turned out, she only held off telling me until after Frank had polished off two pieces of apple pie with double scoops of vanilla ice cream on them. She wasn’t stingy with my serving, but my patience was wearing thin, and after the day I’d had, my appetite wasn’t up to par. She noticed.
“No need to pout,” she said. “He’s my favorite nephew because you’re my favorite niece.”
I didn’t try to hide my skepticism.
“My favorite in California,” she amended. Since most of her other nephews and nieces live in Ireland, and only another handful live in other states, this was not the signal honor it may seem.
“Mr. Grady tells me you refer to your only other California niece as ‘Prissy Pants,”“ I said, ”so forgive me if I fail to feel puffed up with flattery.“
“Well, she is a Prissy Pants. And I’m damned tired of her disrespect to her father’s memory.”
“Is anyone buried in that new grave? Or did you just have Mr. Grady and his friends hack up the ground to upset Barbara?”
“Of course someone is buried there. And when I tell you who it is, you’ll be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting such a thing.”
I waited.
“You don’t even have a guess, do you?” she said.
“Tell me something, Aunt Mary. If you go to that cemetery often enough to be on a buddy-buddy basis with the groundskeeper-”
“Mr. Grady is a member of my parish-”
“I’ll bet none of the other members of the parish get benches and trees near their dearly beloveds’ final resting places.”
“Hmph.”
“If you’re there so often,” I went on, “why haven’t you cleaned my father’s side of the stone?”
“Ha! You think I haven’t? You think there was seven years’ worth of bird crap on that stone when you got there today?”
That hurt, but I said, “It does rain once in a while.”
“Rain!” She rose to her feet. “Rain! Oh, my poor nephew Patrick, with nobody to remember him but these two-”
“Mary,” Frank said, quietly but firmly.
She sat down and crossed her arms over her chest. She sighed. “You’re right, Frank. I’m going about this all wrong. All wrong. Irene, I apologize.”
“Me, too,” I said. “On more than one count. You’re right, Mary, I should go out there more often-”
Mary waved a hand in dismissal. “I know why you don’t, and it’s all okay by me, Irene. I need your help, and I should have just asked. I guess I just wondered how long it would take your sister to get curious about that grave.”
“Not long. You said you need my help-does it have something to do with the grave?”
“Yes. Do you remember your cousin Travis?”
I frowned, then shook my head. “If I’ve met a Travis Kelly-”
“Not Kelly. Maguire.”
My eyes widened. “You mean-”
“Yes,” she said. “Your mother’s nephew.”
“He died?” I asked, shocked. The last time I had seen Travis, he was an infant.
“No, his mother died.”
“His mother? Not…”
She nodded. “Your mother’s sister, Briana.”
It was a name I had not heard in over a dozen years. Still, I could feel my face turning red when she mentioned it.
Frank straightened in his chair, his interest piqued.
“I buried her next to your mother,” Aunt Mary said. “I was trying to right a wrong. Your father was a good man-please understand, I’m not denying that on most counts he was a very good man, Irene. But he was wrong to treat Briana the way he did. The least the Kelly family could provide her was a place to rest her bones.”
“I haven’t heard anything about Briana or Travis in so long…”
Mary snorted. “Of course not. Your father made sure of that, didn’t he?”
I shook my head. “I could have tried to look her up after Dad died. I’m ashamed to say I’d forgotten all about her.”
“I’m confused,” Frank said.
“The Maguires are my mother’s family,” I said. “Most of them are in Kansas. My mother is one of three sisters. I never knew the oldest one, Maggie. Maggie died before I was born. But the other two-my mother, Maureen Maguire, and her sister, Briana-came out to California.”
“Go on,” Mary said, “tell him the rest.”
“My mother married my father, Patrick Kelly, and Barbara and I were born. When we were little, we saw Briana fairly often. Barbara and I were very fond of her.”
“You were much closer to her than Barbara was,” Mary said.
I shrugged. “I suppose that’s true.”
“It’s undoubtedly true.”
“So what happened?” Frank asked.
“She got married, and my father never liked her husband.”
“To put it mildly,” Aunt Mary grumbled.
“I didn’t like him either,” I said.
“Do you even remember him?”
“Yes. Arthur Sperry was almost fifteen years-”
“Twelve at most,” she corrected.
“Somewhere between twelve and fifteen years younger than Aunt Briana,” I continued. “He was handsome and charming and still managed to give me the creeps.”
“You liked him at first,” she said.
“Everyone liked him at first. But not after he made a pass at my mother.”
“Hmm. You always did have big ears,” Mary said. “A child shouldn’t have heard such talk.”
“It wasn’t just talk-”
“Never mind that,” Mary said. She turned to Frank. “The upshot of this alleged pass-”
“Alleged!” I protested.
“Of this
alleged
pass,” Mary went on determinedly, “is that the two sisters saw less and less of each other.”
“It wasn’t just that,” I said, turning to Frank. “My mother died not long after they were married.”
“So you were twelve when Travis was born?” he asked.
“Yes. He was born the year my mother died. I never got to know him, really.”
My thoughts drifted to memories of those last weeks of my mother’s life. At that time, hospital rules were different than they are today, and children-defined by the hospital as anyone under sixteen-were not allowed in the patients’ rooms. Barbara was seventeen, but I was only twelve, so I waited alone in the hospital lobby downstairs, while Barbara and my father went up to my mother’s room. I would write notes for my father to bring upstairs, to read to my mother as she lay dying of cancer, to let her know that I was there, too.
As it became clearer to everyone that she would not be coming home from the hospital, family differences were set aside. Still, Aunt Briana did not bring Arthur with her. The first time she came to visit my mother, the nuns wouldn’t let her take the baby up to the room, so she asked me if I would hold Travis until she came back downstairs. I was a little afraid, because I hadn’t spent much time around babies, but Travis made it easy for me. He watched me with that intense, studying stare we allow only babies to make of us. Apparently deciding I was trustworthy, he yawned and fell asleep in my arms.
Briana came back downstairs and thanked me for watching him, and said she would find a sitter next time. But I begged her to bring him back, and whether out of pity or gratitude, she told me she would. And so for three weeks, Travis and I consoled one another, his childhood beginning as mine ended. The last time I held him was the day of the funeral. Aunt Briana took my little talisman against grief away from me that day, and I had not seen him since.
I looked up to find Mary studying me, and saw that she was challenging me to tell the rest of Aunt Briana’s story.
“What is it?” Frank asked, looking between us.
“As it turned out, my father wasn’t such a bad judge of character,” I said.
“But far too much of a judge!” Mary snapped.
“Arthur and Briana weren’t legally married,” I said.
“Now don’t make it sound as if-” Mary began to interrupt.
“Arthur already had a wife,” I said. “He was a bigamist.”
One good thing about marrying a cop is that announcements like these are received with a great deal more equanimity than they might be otherwise. He merely raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Briana had separated from him before anyone else learned that he was already married,” Mary said.
“Not long before. But that’s not the worst of it. No one else learned that he was a bigamist until he was wanted for questioning in connection with a murder in Los Alamitos. His first wife-his legal spouse- was found dead. He was suspected of killing her, but it took awhile to link Arthur Spanning‘-which was his real name-with Arthur Sperry’ Once the connection was made, guess who supplied his alibi?”
“Briana,” Frank said.
“Yes, and Travis backed her up. They said Arthur had been at their home. It wasn’t hard to back up his story, because on the night in question, Travis had cut his hand and was treated at a local hospital. Arthur had carried him into the emergency room. Briana was with them.”
“Anyone else ever accused of the murder?” Frank asked.
“No,” I said. “Everyone always thought Arthur did it, and that Briana just lied for him.”
“Your father thought so, anyway,” Mary said.
“He wasn’t alone. He thought Briana was afraid of Arthur.”
“Well, it hardly matters. They separated. As far as I know, Briana never saw him after that.”
“I wish I had known about Briana’s funeral,” I said.
“There was no funeral to speak of,” Mary said.
“What?”
“She was a Jane Doe.”
“A Jane Doe? Briana?”
“In Las Piernas?” Frank asked.
“No,” Mary said, answering his question first. “She was the victim of a hit-and-run accident in San Pedro. Well, perhaps ‘accident’ isn’t the right word for it. She was walking home from the neighborhood market one morning, didn’t have any identification on her. It took almost two weeks for them to figure out who she was.”
“San Pedro?” I asked. “What was she doing there?”
“She moved there after all the notoriety of the murder case drove her to leave Las Piernas. She stayed here for a time, found a fairly good job as a secretary, but sooner or later she would encounter someone who knew her story. It was very painful for her-for Travis, too, I’m sure.
“So she moved. It took her awhile to find work, but she eventually got a job as a file clerk in a health clinic. Never did have a lot of money. She kept to herself. Life just kept getting harder and harder for her. She had been having health problems lately-something wrong with one of her knees, I think. A couple of months ago, it got so bad it forced her to leave her job. She was living on a small disability check. She hadn’t lived in this last apartment for very long.”
“Travis told you all of this?”
She shook her head sadly. “No, but I suspect Travis hasn’t been in touch with her for some time. And no one over there at this new place really got to know her before she died. Oh, she’d met a couple of her more curious neighbors, but I don’t think they ever learned much about her. I learned a few things from them, but they didn’t even know she had a son. When the police finally figured out which apartment she lived in, they found an Easter card I sent to her a few weeks ago, and that’s how they got in touch with me. I told them I would bury her.”
I tried, but could not reconcile this image of a lonely recluse with that of my aunt Briana. I thought of the last time I had seen her, at my mother’s funeral.
“Travis-” I said.
“That’s what I need you to do, Irene. I want you to find him. A child should be told when his mother is dead. And even if he’s like you, and doesn’t want to visit the grave, at least he should know where she’s buried. But I also need your help-yours and Frank’s-to find out who killed her.”