Bloodlines (41 page)

"They came damned close to succeeding," O'Connor said.

"Okay," Irene said, "but back up. We've found the car. So we know there wasn't simple coincidence at work. Think about it--there had to be a ring-master of this circus. That person knew about the Ducanes' yacht, and that they planned to take it out that night."

"And planned to take Kathleen and Todd with them," Max said.

"Right. And like I said, he or she knew that Rose Hannon would be here alone with the baby."

"And the trio that went to work on Jack either followed him or knew he'd be at the party," O'Connor said.

"Did they have invitations?" Irene asked.

"Yes," O'Connor said. "But no one was ever able to verify where they got them from. Lillian gave a stack of invitations to the Ducanes, and she has always believed that the Thelma and Barrett Ducane must have given one of their invitations to someone who knew Bo Jergenson--but the Ducanes weren't around to tell us who that might have been."

"So think of it as a circus from hell. Three rings--Jack in one ring, Thelma and Barrett Ducane in another, and Katy, Todd, and their baby in the third."

"So who's the ringmaster?" Max asked.

O'Connor thought of mentioning Yeager, recalled this young man's defense of him at Lillian's dinner party, and decided to keep his theories to himself. It occurred to him that Irene might be doing the same.

"The ringmaster? Someone who had a connection to the people in all three rings," Lefebvre said.

"Who benefited the most?" Irene asked.

"Warren Ducane, more than anyone," Lefebvre said. "With every other Ducane out of the way, he inherited a bundle."

"He disappeared just before that shopping center broke ground," Irene added.

"Not in a million years," O'Connor said.

All three stared at him in surprise.

"First of all, Jack and Warren knew each other. Warren was a party boy in those days. I can't think of a reason in the world he'd do something like that to Jack. They always got along fine."

"But the money..." Max said.

"I've never known a man who loved his brother more than Warren loved Todd. Looked up to him--not that Todd was any great role model, but Warren didn't see that."

"Maybe his hero failed him in some way," Irene said. "It has been known to happen."

O'Connor eyed her narrowly, then glanced at Lefebvre, who was suddenly busying himself with putting the photos back in the envelope. "That isn't the only reason," O'Connor said. "I was there when he got the news. Warren was shocked to hear that Todd was dead."

"But not shocked that his parents were dead?" Lefebvre asked.

O'Connor shrugged. "Neither Dan nor I were ever sure about that. We both thought he was hiding something. But he had a solid alibi and if someone got a payoff from him, Dan never saw it--and he looked hard for something like that. Warren let him look at his bank accounts and all of that without throwing any obstacles in his way."

Irene turned toward Lefebvre, who shook his head and said, "Oh no, I'm not talking to you about the man's finances. But what O'Connor said is true."

"Well, Warren didn't mastermind it, anyway," she said.

"What makes you so sure?" Max asked.

She turned to Lefebvre. "The department watched him closely after his parents disappeared?"

"I never said so."

"Come on, Lefebvre. The heir and everyone else in the family missing, he cashes in big time, and your department didn't think you guys ought to watch him?"

"I know I seem very old to you, but I wasn't with the department then. But let's assume Dan Norton checked into his alibi and kept an eye on him."

"Good," she said. "Because I think the police would have noticed if he had gone up into the mountains and shot someone and stuffed the body in the trunk of a car."

"True," Lefebvre said. "But maybe he killed the man earlier in the proceedings."

"When? Gus Ronden was up in the mountains before O'Connor and Norton found Warren over at Auburn Sheffield's place. Ronden must have left not long after he killed Bo and dumped Jack in the marsh."

"I used to wonder why they would have bothered moving Jack," O'Connor said, "and knew it had something to do with the Buick, but--I was missing too many pieces of the puzzle. Everyone who knew Jergenson said he wasn't too bright, so I suspect he wasn't supposed to take Jack to the farm."

"They thought they had drowned Jack, right?" she asked.

"They probably thought they had finished him off," he agreed.

He watched her brows draw together.

"We know Gus Ronden was connected to both the kidnapping and the attack on Corrigan," Lefebvre said. "Our crime lab found bloodstains on clothing at his house, and it wasn't his blood--he was type A. The blood on the clothing in the hamper matched Rose Hannon's blood type--she was AB, which is found in only about four percent of the population. Jack Corrigan was type O--we found type O bloodstains in the trunk of Ronden's car, but we also found fibers from Jack's clothing and his keys inside the trunk. The gun in Ronden's car fired the bullet that killed Jergenson, so we know he was at the marsh that night."

"And you found the weapon that killed Rose Hannon," Irene said.

"Yes. It was a knife among Gus Ronden's possessions." He sighed. "He had previously assaulted a woman. Today, we could have run many more tests for proteins on the bloodstains than we could in 1958, and narrowed down the possible contributors of that type O blood. And Gus Ronden would have shown up in the NCIC."

"The FBI computer project?" O'Connor asked.

"Yes. National Crime Information Center. Back in 'fifty-eight, it wasn't all that hard for criminals to relocate. No easy way to track them between jurisdictions. This system changes all that. Soon we're supposed to be getting hooked up to an automated fingerprint system from the FBI. So--"

"Back up," Irene said. "The bloodstains--what was the baby's blood type?"

"Type O. Katy and Todd were both type O."

She looked toward Max. "I've given blood, so I know I'm type A. Do you know your blood type?"

"Yes," he said, "I'm type O, but it doesn't matter now--the real Max Ducane has been found. Besides, it's the most common blood type."

"Was all of the blood inside the Buick type O?"

"We aren't sure we'll be able to work with any of those bloodstains. They are quite old and most have been contaminated by dirt or degraded by bacteria."

"Most? Does that mean you may have some you can work with?"

"I'm not going to discuss that now."

She muttered, "Spirit of openness." Lefebvre ignored her.

"The police checked out Warren's alibi, right?" Max asked.

"Yes," Lefebvre said. "Warren Ducane could have paid others to do his work for him, of course."

"I don't think it's Warren," Irene said. "If his motive was the inheritance, and he already knew the baby was dead, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for him to set up a trust fund for his lost nephew and then actually give that trust--worth much more now than it was then--to Max. Even if setting up the fund was just some way of throwing you off his trail, it made no sense for him to keep it going so long--if he had arranged to have the baby killed, why not take the money back after ten years? He could have told everyone, 'I tried my best to find him, but I've given up hope now.' No one would have blamed him. Instead, he went out of his way to find Max and talked him into taking the money."

"That's true," Max said, and O'Connor heard the relief in his voice.

"Let's look through the rest of the house," Lefebvre suggested.

As they made the long trek toward the master bedroom, Irene said, "Katy slept so far away from her baby," voicing the same thought that had crossed O'Connor's mind twenty years before.

"No," Max said. "There's a bassinet in her room, too."

"Oh, good," she said, then added in a quieter voice, "I don't know why I mentioned it. I guess it doesn't matter now."

"But it mattered while he lived," O'Connor said.

"While he lived..." she repeated softly. "Wait! Why wasn't the baby killed here?"

All three men stopped walking and turned toward her.

"I mean," she said, looking self-conscious, "if you were going to kill an infant and bury him in a car trunk, why not just kill him here? It would have been easier to kill him than the maid, right? And if he was dead, you wouldn't need to worry that he'd cry or scream or... cause you any trouble."

Lefebvre got a thoughtful look on his face.

"The police must have considered that question before now," Max said. "What's the answer?"

"Until yesterday," Lefebvre reminded him, "we thought the Ducanes had probably been the victims of a boating accident--although there were questions, there was no proof that it had been anything else. We thought the child had been kidnapped, to be held for ransom. And perhaps killed when the possibility of ransom disappeared. And we really weren't sure how Jack Corrigan's beating figured into anything, other than some kind of connection between the man who assaulted him and the one who murdered Rose Hannon. So, sorry, but no. No ready answers to that question."

They went into Katy's room first. O'Connor watched Irene, curious about her reaction to the other woman's room. "It was her sanctuary, wasn't it?" she said. "Everything a young 1950s society girl could want..." She strolled around, touching objects as she named them. "Music in high fidelity, color television, books, a comfy bed with baby close by, and ...a dog bed? Oh, how sad. What happened to the dog?"

Max and Lefebvre looked to O'Connor.

"The pug? No one knew. I thought it might have run away after the nurse-maid was murdered."

"No..." Lefebvre said slowly. "No, wait..." He started looking through his envelope of photos again. He pulled out an eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy--a photograph taken at a party. A half-dozen elegantly dressed people stood near a big birthday cake. Happy Birthday, Kathleen! was inscribed in flowing script on the cake. O'Connor immediately recognized the six people--Lillian and Harold Linworth, Thelma and Barrett Ducane, Katy and Todd Ducane. Katy was holding a dog. Her pug.

"The dog was with her!" Irene said. "The Ducanes never came back here that night, right?"

"Right," Lefebvre said. "Her roadster was at Thelma and Barrett's home. There were no signs of violence there. We don't think anyone entered the house. The trouble must have started at the marina or on the boat."

"So when she got to her in-laws' home, she either left the dog in the yard there--no, you would have found it. She must have taken it with her."

"By God," O'Connor said angrily, as understanding dawned on him. "Woolsey! That dumb bastard can't tell a dog's bones from a child's?"

"You're saying those could be a dog's bones in the trunk of the car?" Max asked. "A dead dog, not a baby?" He sat down on the bed, looking pale.

"Hold on, hold on," Lefebvre said. "We don't know what happened. And just because we don't know what happened to a dog doesn't mean those bones weren't those of the baby. The dog could have been lost off the Sea Dreamer or thrown overboard. The dog could have run away that night and ended up living on a neighboring farm."

"Or Mitch Yeager could have pressured or paid off the coroner," O'Connor said.

"It could also be an honest mistake," Lefebvre said. "Have you ever seen the bones of an infant that age? I have." He paused and looked away for a moment. "The bones of a two-month-old baby are so small, so fragile. Found in fragments, as most of these were ...a dog breed with a rounded skull... you can't assume that a preliminary finding couldn't be honestly mistaken."

"That's kind of you, that is!" O'Connor said. "And I understand that you need to keep working with the man."

"O'Connor..." Irene said, looking between him and Lefebvre.

But it was Max who spoke next. "Perhaps you should tell the coroner that he might want to take another look at those bones and make sure he's right, because Mitch Yeager is not the only person in Las Piernas who is ...concerned. I am concerned. I'm sure my friend Lillian Linworth will also want to know the true facts. As will Auburn Sheffield. If the coroner's not willing to take a closer, honest look, then tomorrow morning I'm calling..." He looked to Irene.

"The State Attorney General's office," she said.

"Yes, the State Attorney General's office, and asking for an independent investigation."

"Sounds like a newspaper story to me," Irene said.

"Oh, it is," O'Connor said. "And if anyone on the County Board of Supervisors reads the Sunday morning edition of the Express, then they just might finally decide it's time to replace Old Sheep Dip."

"Have you thought about the possibility," Lefebvre said, "that he could be right, that those bones are the baby's?"

"I consider that slim, knowing who was visiting him," O'Connor said.

"And what reason would Mitch Yeager have to influence him?"

"I can tell you that," Irene said. "He hoped to ruin Max's chances of living independently of him. Mr. Yeager didn't know the terms of the trust and figured Max would have to give up all his money and become dependent on him again. He's had big plans for Max."