The Mother's Day Murder (14 page)

“Hi, I’m Chris Brooks, your neighbor down the street.”

“Yes, of course. Come in, please. I see you and your little boy all the time. He gets plenty of fresh air, don’t
you, dear?” She bent over to smile at him in a very grandmotherly way.

“Is your husband home?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. He’s in the sunroom. You want to talk to him?”

“I’d like to talk to both of you.”

We went into the sunroom at the back of the house. I am always intrigued at how people manage to personalize their homes, adding interesting rooms, decks, and patios, landscaping in unusual ways. The sunroom at the back of the Kovaks’ house was not large but I could see why it was probably a favorite room. It was filled with beautiful green plants, some of them in bloom, and a small tree stood in a corner. The furniture was comfortable and whatever the season, there was a lovely view out the windows.

“Stanley, this is Chris Brooks, our neighbor. She lives in Margaret’s old house.” She turned to me. “Such a lovely woman, your aunt.”

He looked up from a book he was reading, set it aside, and stood to greet us. Mrs. Kovak left for a moment, returning with a cookie for Eddie that I was sure was sweet. He took it, said thank you, and dug in.

“So,” Mr. Kovak said, “to what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I want to talk to you about what happened on Sunday. The girl who had the accident was a guest of mine and I want to do everything I can to find out who was responsible.”

“Well, we weren’t.”

“Do you have any idea who was?”

“Nope.”

“Did either of you hear anything?”

“Nothing.” His wife was silent.

“About your gun—”

“I don’t have it. It was stolen, I reported it stolen, and I haven’t seen it since.”

“When did you buy it?”

“Oh boy. That’s a good question. You remember when that was, Ellie?”

“Must be ten years ago.”

“More. I don’t remember. They have a record at the police station, unless they lost that, too. I did it on the up and up, got a license, bought the gun, just the way the law says you should.”

“Where did you keep it?”

“Kept it in my bedroom. We’ve got a big closet and I had it wrapped in soft cloth, the way you’re supposed to, up on a shelf where the grandkids couldn’t reach it.”

“Was it loaded?”

“I always kept one bullet in it.”

“And you had other bullets besides?”

“Had a box of ’em. Kept it on the same shelf.”

“The Greiners knew you had a gun, didn’t they?”

“I didn’t make no secret of it.”

“When did you find it was missing?”

“When was that, Ellie?”

“It must be a month ago.”

“More. Five or six weeks. I reached up to get something and I felt the cloth that I kept it in and didn’t feel anything inside. I felt around and then I got a stepstool and climbed up to have a look. Took everything down from the shelf but it wasn’t there.”

“Was the box of bullets there?”

“It was there. I couldn’t tell you if any of them were missing. I didn’t count them.”

“And you reported the loss to the police.”

“I went over there myself the next morning. Gave them all the information, answered all their questions.”

“And there’s no record that you reported it,” I said.

“Can’t help it if they’re incompetent.” He seemed to shrug off the whole incident.

“Do you ever leave your door unlocked?” I asked.

A look passed between them and I sensed this was an issue they had talked about before. “I do,” Mrs. Kovak said. She looked grim. “When we moved in, this was the safest place in the world. Everybody trusted everybody else. There wasn’t any need to lock your doors.”

“You can’t trust everybody, Ellie. You know that.”

“At first, I was very careful. I’d lock the door every time I went out because Stanley wanted it that way. We had bolts put on all the doors and I’d lock them, too. But after a while, it just didn’t seem all that necessary. I remember once, I went somewhere and forgot to turn a tea kettle off so I called my neighbor—they’re gone now—and asked her to go inside and turn off the stove. I’d left the back door open so it wasn’t any trouble for her.”

Stanley Kovak watched his wife as she told her story. His face was the picture of disapproval. I could sense her sadness that times had changed for the worse, that those friendly, trusting times were gone and you couldn’t live with the same sense of security as in the good old days.

“Good cookie,” Eddie said, beaming.

“Let me get you another one, dear. Why don’t you come to the kitchen with me and you can pick one out.” She seemed relieved to get out of the sunroom.

“So anyone could have walked in and found your gun,” I said.

“Anyone who saw us leave the house. I work only part-time now, which is why I’m home this morning, but Ellie runs around, visits friends, goes shopping. If she doesn’t lock the door, I tell you, it’s asking for trouble.”

Since I have a husband who feels essentially the same way, although he expresses himself rather less aggressively than Stanley Kovak, I felt some empathy for his point of view. “My husband is a police officer,” I said. “He agrees with everything you say.”

“Sounds like he has some sense. Can you tell me what all these questions are for?”

“I want to find out who killed that poor girl on Sunday morning.”

“Well, you’re lookin’ in the wrong place. I hated that tree, hated what it did to my driveway, what it did to my cars every time you went over that cracked cement. I would’ve given a prize to anyone who’d cut it down. Why that girl did it, I can’t tell you. I never saw her before I saw her dead.”

“Had you been near an agreement with the Greiners on the tree?” I asked.

“There was some talk about getting in a professional mediator but nothing was settled. That’s where I’d look for a killer, if I was you.”

“At the Greiners’?”

“Who else?”

“Stanley,” his wife said, coming back, holding Eddie’s hand, “you shouldn’t say that. They’re decent people.”

“Decent people sometimes go berserk. I think they saw what was going on and came out and shot her out of pure anger.”

“Where did they get the gun?” I asked.

“Don’t look at me. I didn’t shoot anybody. They’ve got two big boys over there could’ve come in here and stolen the gun.”

I didn’t want to think about that. “I don’t think they’re people who have anything to do with guns,” I said.

“That’s the parents. You never know about the children.”

I decided I had given him long enough on his soapbox. I stood and asked Eddie how he liked the cookie. He assured me it was very good and I wiped the crumbs off his face so we wouldn’t leave a trail as we left. I thanked them both for their help, shook their hands to show them we were friends, and walked back to our house.

15

I sat beside a window on the plane the next morning with a breakfast tray in front of me, hoping all had gone well with Jack and Eddie. There was an empty seat to my left and a man with a laptop on the aisle. While he ate his breakfast, the laptop sat on the seat between us.

I had talked to Jack last evening about my interviews with Carol Greiner and the Kovaks. Jack was skeptical about the police losing a report of a missing gun but he said anything could happen and sometimes did, as he knew from thirteen years on the job. Still, it didn’t seem likely.

We had no way of knowing whether it was the Kovak gun that had killed Randy Collins, only that the bullet in her came from the same caliber as the gun he had registered. And if the gun never turned up, we could never do the test firings and would never know for sure. There were plenty of handguns of that type around. And with the ax that was found at the crime scene almost certainly ours, it didn’t make sense that Stanley Kovak had been the one to cut down the tree. The whole thing made me dizzy.

Ahead of me was a visit to a state I had never been in, which could describe most of the states in our country. I
didn’t have a lot of questions for Mrs. DelBello, but I thought that if we talked awhile, her memory might be jogged. If she could remember that Randy’s natural mother was a petite blond or a sixteen-year-old redhead, that might be enough to get Joseph off the hook.

Jack had reserved a compact car for me at the airport and I followed Mrs. DelBello’s directions to her home. I had called her last night and confirmed that I would see her today. She lived in a small house on a quiet street with similar small houses. Cars tended to be parked in garages or on driveways so there was plenty of room for mine right in front of her address.

I left my little suitcase in the trunk of the rental car, made sure I had the keys in my hand, and locked the doors. I rang the bell next to a door painted a beautiful shade of blue and waited.

The door eventually opened and a gray-haired woman with a sallow complexion, holding a cane, said, “You must be the lady from New York.”

“I’m Chris Bennett. I’m happy to meet you, Mrs. DelBello.”

We went inside, I following as she walked slowly. She didn’t seem to need the cane to walk but probably took it for a sense of security. She sat in a firm chair and laid the cane on the floor beside her.

“Oh, I didn’t take your coat.”

“It’s OK. I’ll just leave it here. Please don’t get up.” I folded it over the back of the sofa and sat on a chair.

The room was clean and orderly and comfortably furnished, a carpet covering the floor and attractive draperies at the windows. There was a fireplace on one wall, the mantle covered with pictures from one end to the other.

“This is very comfortable,” I said.

“I’ve lived here a long time. We raised three children here. My husband died several years ago and it looks like I don’t have much longer myself, but I’ll stay here as long as I can.”

“How long did you work for God’s Love Adoptions?”

“I went there as a girl doing secretarial work. While I was there, I took courses and got my degree in social work. From the beginning until I retired was forty-four years.”

“You must have enjoyed the work,” I said.

“Well, you’re doing a service. On the one hand, there’s a girl who’s got a baby she can’t bring up and on the other there’s a couple that’s desperate to have one. So you could say it’s a double blessing.”

“When did Randy Collins first come to you?”

“Oh, it’s quite some time ago, a couple of years anyway. She wanted to find her birth mother. They all do nowadays. Back in the fifties, there was a lot less of that.”

“What did you tell her, Mrs. DelBello?”

She looked down, as though getting her thoughts together. “Those records were sealed, you know.”

“I understand. I’m not passing judgment.”

“She came to our office and they said they couldn’t help her. It’s what we say when they come to us. I was still working there but I was close to retirement. I saw her when she came in. She seemed like a sweet girl. She cried when they turned her down. She was about to go and I got up from my desk and went to her. I said, ‘Let’s sit down and talk,’ and we went back to my little cubicle. She was very grateful. I told her we couldn’t give her information that we had promised to keep secret. She begged and pleaded and I left her for a minute and went
to check the files. It had been one of my cases and I remembered it. I went back and told her I would do what I could and asked where I could call her. She gave me a number and said she was in Cincinnati for only a day or two. I walked her to the door and she left.”

“Where was she staying?” I asked.

“I don’t really know. When I called her, a man answered and called her to the phone. Maybe she was with a friend.”

“Go on. I’m sorry I interrupted you.”

She moved in her chair, making herself more comfortable. “I went to the files again later that afternoon. It was all there. I thought, well, I’ll just give her the name of the hospital and she can take it from there. So that’s what I did. She was born in Good Samaritan Hospital. It’s outside the city. I called her that night and told her. She thanked me and said she would let me know how it turned out.

“But I didn’t hear from her for a long time, months and months. Out of the blue she called me one day at home. I had retired by then and it took me a minute to remember who she was. She said she’d come to Cincinnati for the summer and got herself a job at the hospital. I said, ‘Well, that’s very enterprising of you,’ and she said, ‘I found the file of when I was born.’ ”

“How could she do that if she didn’t know the name of her birth mother?”

“She found the file on herself. When she was adopted, she became Randy Collins. There was some cross-referencing that led her to her birth mother. There was a name and address and Randy went there and found a neighbor who put her in touch with the family. That’s what she told me.”

“Did she say she had found her mother?”

“Not yet. Her mother wasn’t living in Ohio anymore.”

“Did you ever hear from Randy again?”

“She sent me a Christmas card and said she was pretty sure she had found her mother and she was going to talk to her as soon as she could arrange it.”

“And that was it?”

“That was it. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

“I’d like to know what you remember about that adoption. You met the woman who gave birth, didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes. She came to us when she was pregnant and said she was going to have a baby. She couldn’t raise it herself, and she couldn’t marry the father. She wanted to have it and give it up for adoption.”

“She gave you her name and address and all that sort of thing?”

“Yes, she did. And proof of her age. She was old enough to do what she wanted.”

“Where did she live while she was pregnant?”

“Oh, now I’m not sure I remember that. She may have lived at home.”

“Did you ever call her there?”

“Yes. We kept in touch.”

“Do you remember her name?”

“Bailey, I think it was. I remember that I called her Katherine.”

I knew my shudder was visible.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“Yes, it’s OK. I’m sorry. You were saying that you called her Katherine.”