Bloodlines (40 page)

"Go," he said, laughing. "Take advantage of Lefebvre's cooperative mood while it lasts."

"But deadline--"

"I'll polish the story a bit, add what I have from Auburn, and turn it in-- if that's all right with you."

I told Lefebvre I'd be right there. I thanked O'Connor, grabbed my camera, and took off.

I was closer to the store than Lefebvre was--the police department used to be headquartered nearer to the newspaper, but they had moved to a newer and bigger facility in the 1960s, generally regarded as one of the ugliest buildings in Las Piernas, and not just by those brought to it in the back of a squad car.

Lefebvre greeted me, then looked up at the store and said, "I'm told Mr. Belen is a diamond expert, and the most reliable jeweler in town."

"I don't know about that, but Bijoux has been around forever."

"As if you would have any sense of forever," he said. "Bijoux, eh?"

"It's hard for most of the locals to say it," I said. "I've actually heard it pronounced 'buy jocks.' You, however, make it sound exotic."

"I was just thinking that it is a bit plain," he said. "In French, the word means 'jewelry.'"

"So are we here to get the Vanderveer diamonds cleaned?"

He smiled. "And I had thought to surprise you."

"I couldn't think of any other reason you would invite me to come to a jewelry store."

"Why, to get a ring for O'Connor's nose," he said, holding the door open for me.

"Next time, I'm using the hold button," I said, and entered the store.

"Speaking of putting things on hold," he said, following me, "I need you to hang on to the information you hear today. Not run it in a story until I let you know that we can release it. Can you promise me that?"

I tested his resolve on this a bit and found that he wouldn't budge, so I agreed, with conditions. "If you'll promise me in return that you won't wait just for the fun of it," I said. "Oh--and if I can get this information any other way--"

"You can't," he said. "But yes, I agree to your conditions."

Mr. Belen was an elderly man with a charming accent of his own--one I couldn't quite place. He had some photographs in hand.

"Mr. Belen is Mrs. Linworth's jeweler," Lefebvre said. "Before she gave the necklace to her daughter, she asked Mr. Belen to clean the diamonds and repair any loose settings. Today he told me that he photographed his finished work."

"Yes, I did," Belen answered. He sighed. "I'm so sorry that the next time it was seen was under such terrible circumstances. I knew Miss Kathleen. A lovely girl."

He showed us the photographs--two lovely double-strands of round diamonds. He laid out a black velvet cloth, and Lefebvre gently placed two small sections of the necklace that were still united and twenty-six loose diamonds onto it. At my look of puzzlement, Lefebvre said, "We found most of them under the bodies and in the crevices of the trunk."

They were in a range of sizes, and Mr. Belen spoke to us as he quickly sorted them. "There should be one hundred and twenty of them," he said.

"We collected forty-one."

Mr. Belen raised a brow.

Lefebvre said, "I won't tell you that our evidence control is always perfect, but with something this valuable, and in a case like this, we are extremely careful. These diamonds were collected under the highest security possible."

"Could some of the diamonds still be in the car?"

"Every inch of that car, and everything in it, has been searched and sifted through. We've gathered much more minute evidence than diamonds." He turned to me. "That is not for publication."

"No, why should I tell anyone you're doing your job?"

Mr. Belen went back to sorting diamonds. Before long, it was clear that most of the missing stones were from a middle section, the part that would hang lowest--and which had the biggest diamonds in it.

"Maybe whoever killed her grabbed the necklace and yanked down," I said, "and kept whatever he still had in his hands. Stuffed a few more in his pockets."

"In a hurry," Lefebvre agreed.

"And took them after he killed her," I said.

"How could you know that?" Belen asked.

"If she had been alive, I think he simply would have made her take them off and hand them over. The loose stones wouldn't be in the trunk."

"They won't be hard to identify if the killer still has them, just as he took them," Belen said, "but I suspect he has had them recut. This style of diamond cutting is passe. The newer ways of cutting disperse light in the stone in a way that makes them brighter."

Lefebvre and I both took photos when Belen had the diamonds laid out in the order they belonged. Belen gave Lefebvre copies of the photos he had taken in December 1957, and looked at me apologetically.

"I'm sure Detective Lefebvre won't mind making copies for me," I reassured him.

Detective Lefebvre ignored me as he studied the pictures. "I have some photos of her wearing the diamonds at the party," he said, "but none of just the necklace itself. Thanks--this will help."

We left not much later. I mentioned to Lefebvre the Chesterfields and the lighter Jack had given to Katy. He took notes. I thanked him for bringing me along to the jewelry store and told him I'd see him later that night. I had just enough time to have dinner with Dad and Aunt Mary.

As I drove home, I thought I saw someone following me in a dark car. I made a few unnecessary turns to get to streets that were emptier, where it would be harder for a tail to hide from me. Nothing.

I told myself not to let myself get spooked so easily and kept driving.

**CHAPTER 38

AS O'CONNOR STEPPED INTO THE FOYER, THE LAST OF THE FOUR TO ENTER the Ducane home, he felt himself surrounded by ghosts. The house was much as he remembered it. He thought of the four murder victims--of Katy, Todd, and the baby, but most especially of the nursemaid, whose blood he had seen on that rainy evening more than twenty years ago. He thought of all that had happened that evening in so short a space of time, and much of it centering around this household.

He recalled the urgency with which Jack had insisted he look for Katy that night--how Jack hadn't cared about his own injuries (or sending O'Connor out into the rain) half as much as he cared about Katy. He remembered now that Jack said something had been troubling her. He remembered the note to Jack, asking if Mitch was her father, and wondered if that was what had disturbed her that evening. He felt sad for her, thinking of her now from nearly the same age Jack had been, while she had been about the age Max Ducane was now.

When Max turned on the lights, the cleanliness of the house only emphasized its emptiness, made it into a well-kept museum, and added to O'Connor's feelings of disquiet.

He watched Irene and Lefebvre. As Lefebvre looked around, nothing in his facial expression gave away his thoughts or feelings. He had a large brown envelope in his hands--crime scene photographs, he had told them. Irene, he thought, should never let anyone talk her into getting into a poker game. She was bothered, he could see--by the thought of what had gone on here twenty years ago, or perhaps because the house seemed frozen in another decade. She had a small camera with her, the one she had brought to the groundbreaking ceremony, hanging by a strap around her neck. She wasn't using it.

"I thought you said this place has been empty for twenty years," she said to Max. "There's no dust."

"Lillian has paid someone to keep it clean," Max said. "Weird, huh?"

"Seriously weird." She glanced uneasily at O'Connor. "I mean... Lillian seems to have moved on with her life, but then there's this house, sitting here."

He thought of his protectiveness of Maureen's room, how hard it had been when his eldest sister had moved into that room. "The families of the missing can't live in the same way other people do. If you know what happened to someone--that the person moved away, or died, or chose to be with someone else--your mind can let go, even if your heart takes a little longer to do the same. When a person you love is missing, inexplicably gone, perhaps you want to cling to anything associated with them, anything solid and normal, any reminder that they were here. If you keep a place for them, they might return. You worry that if you stop remembering them--and memories do fade--then the missing person will disappear in a more final way. That seems as if it would be a horrible betrayal, and so you fight it. And besides, the physical gives you something to focus on, other than the endless questions."

He became suddenly self-conscious, and especially aware of a change in Lefebvre's scrutiny.

Irene said, "Max, you've lived away from Las Piernas, so you probably don't realize that O'Connor is kind of famous around here for all he does to help families of missing persons, and to help find the identities of John and Jane Does."

"You were going to show us the house, Max?" O'Connor said quickly.

"I suppose we should start upstairs," Max said, and led them up the large, curving staircase.

"Check out the phone,"he said to Irene, pointing to one that sat on a small marble-topped hall table.

The phone would have been an old one when Katy lived here; it was made of black Bakelite, and had no dial on it.

"An extension only," O'Connor said.

"So is this place exactly the way it was the last time you were here?" Irene asked.

"No," Max answered, before O'Connor could reply. "Lillian hired someone to repair the door off the kitchen, and she's had the place painted. I think ...well, a new floor was put in the nursery. Let's go there first."

As he led them into it, he said, "At least I can stop wondering if this used to be my room."

"Did you wonder?" Irene asked.

"Not really," he said. At the doubting looks of the others, he moved over to the empty bassinet and ran his fingers lightly along its rim. "I mean, everyone who is adopted has that fantasy at some point in his childhood--you were always the kidnapped prince, of course, and never the abandoned pauper. Warren seemed so certain that I had once been this little prince, I asked myself if it could be possible. But if you mean, did I ever have some mystical experience in here, some faint memory from infancy? No."

O'Connor thought of the way the room looked that night--really looked. Not this sanitized shrine.

The bloodstains.

He heard paper rustling and saw Lefebvre opening his envelope. Photographs. Lefebvre set a small stack of them on the changing table. Almost against his will, O'Connor drew nearer to look, standing next to Irene.

In stark black-and-white, the top photo showed him what the room had looked like when Dan Norton had arrived, when Rose Hannon's body still lay on the floor. He saw what Dan had seen that long-ago night--the bloodstains and the position of the body indicated that she had been crawling on the floor toward the bassinet. The poor woman had bled to death trying to reach the baby.

Max glanced over their shoulders, shuddered, and moved away.

"There was another member of the house staff. A maid, right?" Irene asked, picking up the photo and looking through the next three. They were far more gruesome shots of the body.

"Yes. She wasn't implicated," Lefebvre said.

She handed the photos back to Lefebvre. "I'm just thinking that Gus Ronden must have known a lot about this household. He knew that the Ducanes wouldn't be at home, and that the baby wouldn't be with his mother. He knew that Rose Hannon would be here alone with the child."

"He might have come here ready to kill two women," Lefebvre said.

"Maybe," Irene said. "But that would be much more chancy, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," O'Connor said. "But Dan and I both checked up on the other maid. Doesn't seem likely at all that she knew Gus Ronden."

"Is she still living?" Irene asked.

"Yes," Lefebvre said. "Why on earth does that make you smile?"

"Because you wouldn't know she was alive unless you had already contacted her. What did you find out?"

"That I should watch what I say around you."

"You've both lost me, I'm afraid," said Max.

"You have to think of everything that was going on in Las Piernas that night," Irene said. "Too much was going on at once for it to be explained as just a random, terribly unlucky night." She frowned in concentration. "I think it was supposed to look as if the Ducanes happened to drown on the night of a kidnapping. In the end, that's the way most of Las Piernas looked at it, right? A horrible coincidence, and the kidnapping of the child was sad, but the Ducanes' tragedy at sea was a combination of foolishness and unpredictable weather."

"Don't forget Jack's beating," O'Connor said.

"I haven't," she answered. "I'm as sure as you are that the beating was planned, but I doubt he was supposed to see the burial of the car."

"I agree," Lefebvre said. "No one was ever supposed to find that buried car. They didn't dump Jack Corrigan in a grove and hope he'd wake up in time to watch--I think that was a mistake. If they had wanted him to see it, they would have given him a front-row seat and a ride back to town. Instead, they tried to kill him."