Dark Truth (19 page)

T
wenty-two

“So, what do you have for me?” Regan propped the phone between her shoulder and her chin so she could talk and take a cobbler out of the oven at the same time.

“I have a little bit of information,” Mitch told her. “You gonna make it worth my while?”

“Don’t I always?”

“Amen.” He chuckled. “In addition to the two brothers you already know about, Eddie Kroll had two sisters. Dorothea and Catherine. Catherine died in 1993—cause unknown—but Dorothea is the widow of Joseph Brown and the mother of three grown daughters.”

“Dorothea Brown,” Regan murmured. “Dorothea Brown . . .”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to look up anything else because—believe it or not—I actually had to work today. And I had to sort through all the hits I got on the stuff I was looking up for Wes. Do you know how many—”

“Dolly Brown,” Regan all but shouted into the phone. “That sneaky little . . . “

“Whoa, who’s Dolly Brown?”

“Dolly Brown is the woman I’ve been talking to in Sayreville, Illinois. She’s the woman I spent several days with a few weeks ago, and never once did she let it drop that she was Eddie’s sister. That explains why she didn’t want me to talk to Carl, why she was so protective of him.”

“Want to explain to me what you’re talking about?”

“I will call you back in fifteen minutes or less.”

“Let me guess. You’re going to call Dolly Brown and give her what-for for not coming clean.”

“I’m going to do better than that. I’m going to book myself on the first flight I can get out there, and then I’m going to do a little investigative work of my own. I’ll call you back. And thanks, Mitch. Your hard work will be rewarded.”

“I’m counting on it,” he said as she hung up.

Regan called the airlines and made arrangements for a morning flight to Chicago, then shuffled through her purse in search of the small phone book she took with her everywhere. She found the number she wanted, dialed it, and leaned on the kitchen counter while waiting for the familiar voice to pick up.

“Hello?”

“Hello, I’d like to speak with Dorothea Brown, please.”

“This is Dorothea Brown.”

“Dorothea Kroll Brown?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“This,” she said, grinning from ear to ear, “is Regan Landry.”

A long silence followed, and for a moment, Regan was afraid Dolly was going to hang up on her.

“Dammit.” Dorothea Kroll Brown cursed softly. “I knew I shoulda got that caller ID thing . . . “

“Why didn’t you tell me you’re Eddie’s sister?” Regan asked.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“I don’t feel like talking about it right now.”

“Well, maybe you’ll feel like talking about it tomorrow.”

“Maybe not.”

“Well, I’d like to see some photos of Eddie.” Regan decided to ignore Dolly’s remarks. She’d made her point. “I realized this morning I’ve never seen a picture of him, except the one in the newspaper, and that wasn’t very good. Eighth-grade graduation or something, right?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m sure you and Carl have pictures of him. I’d like to come and see, if you’ll show me.”

“I’ll have to think about it and call you back in the morning.”

“Well, you’re going to have to call me on my cell phone, because by then I’ll be on my way to Chicago.”

“You ever take no for an answer?”

“Not that I can recall.”

“You know where to find me when you get here.” Dolly hung up.

Regan danced around the kitchen while she speeddialed Mitch. Disappointed to have to leave voice mail, she ran up the steps to the second floor to pack. She hoped Nina wouldn’t object to her leaving for the weekend, but she was excited over the prospect of seeing what Eddie Kroll really looked like.

“Thanks for inviting me to tag along,” Nina said as she got into the front seat of Wes’s car. “I haven’t seen Mrs. Owens since I left Stone River. I hope she remembers me.”

“So do I.” Wes nodded. “Otherwise, I won’t stand a chance of talking to her. She wouldn’t give me the time of day when I called. I thought maybe if I showed up with you, she might reconsider.”

“Well, we’ll soon find out. Porter Street is only two blocks off campus.” Nina pointed to the stop sign up ahead. “You want to go left here.”

“I called Mitch this morning. He told me to express mail the samples we collected yesterday. He’s going to try to rush them through the lab.”

“I heard.” She turned to look at him. “He drove Regan to the airport this morning. She’s going back to Chicago.”

“She’s investigating someone for a book?”

“I think it’ll turn out to be a book. Right now she’s just curious about this guy Eddie Kroll.” Nina filled Wes in on the parts he hadn’t heard.

“It might turn out to be nothing at all,” Wes noted.

“Or it could be something really good. Regan has good instincts when it comes to subject matter. She’ll know if it will work.” Nina looked out the window.

“When is she coming back?”

“She wasn’t sure. She thought maybe Sunday or Monday.”

“Maybe we could have dinner again tonight. I enjoyed being with you the other night.” He stared straight ahead, as if afraid of what he’d see if he looked at her.

“What a coincidence.” She turned back to him. “I’d love to go to dinner tonight.”

“Great.” He nodded. “Let’s see what time we finish up with Mrs. Owens. Maybe we’ll go right from there.”

“I’d probably like to change for dinner.” She looked down at her khakis and button-down shirt.

“You look pretty good to me,” he told her.

“Thanks, but I’d really like to go home and change if we’re going out. We should have time.”

“We would have had more time if I hadn’t had so damned many reports to turn in this morning. The chief has a bug up his butt, wanted a copy of every report and every interview on the Mulroney case.”

“How many interviews?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“That’s a lot of typing.”

“You’re telling me. Fortunately, I didn’t have to type them all this morning. I’ve been doing them as I go along, so all I had to do was finish up the reports from yesterday.”

“You keep a daily log?”

“Yes. It’s easier to keep track of what’s gone on, and it’s a lot easier and faster to type up a couple of reports at the end of the day than it is to type up a couple dozen at the end of the case.”

“The Owens house is the white one with the blue shutters on your side of the street,” Nina told him.

He parked across the street and turned off the ignition.

“Ready?”

“Sure.” She opened the passenger door and got out. She walked around to the front of the car and waited while a trash truck rolled past, then crossed the street with Wes.

From the end of her driveway, they could see Mrs. Owens raking the leaves in her backyard. Halfway up the drive, Nina called to her, rather than startle the woman, who was in her early seventies. She wore tan slacks and a gray cardigan sweater that was at least four sizes too big for her.

“Mrs. Owens?”

The woman turned and squinted. “Who is there?”

“Nina Madden, Mrs. Owens.”

“Nina . . . oh, for heaven’s sakes.” Mrs. Owens leaned her rake against the side of the house and walked toward her visitors. “Well, haven’t you grown up nicely? I never would have recognized you.”

The woman stopped ten feet from them and studied Nina, then said, “Well, maybe I might have known you. You’ve grown up, but now that I’m a little closer, I can see that you haven’t changed all that much. You look wonderful, dear.”

“So do you, Mrs. Owens. You haven’t changed at all.”

“Now, aren’t you a smooth thing,” she replied with a laugh. “But I appreciate the thought. And who’s this here with you?”

“This is Detective Powell, from the Stone River Police Department,” Nina told her. “He’s looking into a murder case at the college, and had some questions about my father’s case.”

Mrs. Owens’s face changed slightly as she appeared to evaluate Wes. “You the one who called me earlier today?”

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”

“Why’d you drag Nina along?”

“Because I figured you wouldn’t talk to me otherwise.”

“Well, that’s probably true enough. I really don’t have much to say about any of that.”

“Any of what?”

“Any of what goes on around the college. I can’t see where you need to talk to me, anyway. I haven’t worked at St. Ansel’s since . . . well, in about fifteen years or so.”

“Why’d you leave?” Nina asked.

“It was time to retire.” Mrs. Owens grabbed the rake and started on the lawn again.

“Mrs. Owens, you loved that school. You loved working there,” Nina said.

“I did, at one time. It just seemed that after . . . “ She looked at Nina apologetically. “After your father was arrested, and there was that trial and everything, things changed. It just wasn’t the same anymore. That was such a terrible time for everyone. The school. The kids. The whole faculty. And of course, it must have been horrible for you.”

Nina nodded.

“I will never forget that day they came and arrested your father, took him right out of his office. I was at my desk, right there in that small office between Dr. Madden’s and Dr. Overbeck’s, and all of a sudden that small space was filled, wall to wall, with police officers. They all had their hands on their guns, the holsters unsnapped so you could see what they had there. As if they were going into some den of thieves instead of an academic environment.” She shook her head. “Dr. Madden had his faults, but he wasn’t a violent man.”

“And yet he was convicted of four murders,” Wes reminded her.

“Yes, well, I have my own theory on that,” she told him.

“I’d like to hear it.”

“I just don’t think he was guilty, that’s all. Dr. Madden was no saint—good Lord, the things that came out about him and those young girls at the trial! But he wasn’t the only sinner in the department, and that’s all I have to say about that.”

“I have the feeling there’s plenty more you could say.” Wes took off his sunglasses and put them in his jacket pocket. “And we’ve got all day.”

“We might as well sit over there at the picnic table, then.” Mrs. Owens led the way. “The arthritis in my knee is acting up today.”

“So who were the other sinners in the department, besides Dr. Madden? Oh, and Dr. Overbeck, of course,” Wes said as they took seats on the benches that were attached to the old wooden table.

“Oh, that one.” Mrs. Owens waved her hand as if to dismiss him.

“You left the college right around the time he became head of the department, didn’t you?” Nina asked.

Mrs. Owens nodded.

“Any particular reason?” Wes rested his arms on the table.

“I just wasn’t going to work for that man. He just annoyed me so bad.” She shook her head. “Always acted so pious and righteous, and all the while he was . . . “ She stopped in midsentence.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Owens. I know he was having an affair with my stepmother,” Nina told her.

“Well, that man just couldn’t get enough of what your father had. If Dr. Madden had it, Dr. Overbeck wanted it. That’s how I saw it.”

“That’s an interesting observation, Mrs. Owens. Can you be more specific?”

“I think I’ve been specific enough. If Dr. Madden taught the class on Poe, Overbeck had to teach it the following year. Dr. Madden set up a discussion group on Thoreau, Overbeck had to take it over after Madden left.”

She turned to Nina. “Your father was a fine teacher. He was well respected by his peers. Some of the younger faculty members used to attend his lectures; were you aware of that?”

Nina shook her head, unable to speak suddenly as an unexpected lump formed in her throat.

“He was widely published—the most published member of the faculty—and was in demand as a guest instructor at foreign colleges and universities. The offers started coming in by November every year for him to teach the following summer. And his students loved him.” She added drily, “Some apparently more than others.”

“I remember that he did go away every summer,” Nina said.

“Just a week or two before he was arrested, he’d received requests to lecture at two very well known English universities.” Mrs. Owens’s smile turned sly. “It drove Dr. Overbeck crazy.”

“What do you mean?” Wes asked.

“He’d been applying at one of those schools for years and he’d been passed over every time. And here his rival is being courted by the same dean who’d been turning him down. He was furious.”

“Really.” Wes exchanged a long look with Nina. “And you’re sure this was just a few weeks before Dr. Madden was arrested.”

“Positive. I remember because the dean from England who’d made the offer to Dr. Madden called when he hadn’t heard back, and it was left to me to explain that Dr. Madden wouldn’t be guest lecturing anywhere that year.”

“So you’d say that there was no love lost between the two.”

“None at all, Detective. Though I would say it was more on Dr. Overbeck’s part than on Dr. Madden’s. He seemed more amused by it than anything else.”

“How many years did you work in the English department, Mrs. Owens?” Wes asked.

“Oh, eight or nine. Father Candelori hired me, and I stayed on until he retired.” She pulled the oversize cardigan closed in the front as a cool breeze blew through the yard. The fingers of her left hand worried the buttons, and the fingers of her right traced the pattern of the ribbing that edged the sleeves. “My husband died right after Father Candelori left, and I would have stayed on if Dr. Madden had been here. But I wasn’t about to work for Dr. Overbeck.”

“I heard somewhere that Dr. Madden was Father Candelori’s first choice to take over the department,” Wes recalled.

Mrs. Owens nodded. “He was. That’s another thing that drove Overbeck nuts. He tried everything he could think of to curry favor with Father Candelori, but Father wouldn’t have none of it. He actually stayed for another year after Dr. Madden left, because he didn’t want to turn over the department to Dr. Overbeck. But finally, he’d gotten so sick, he couldn’t go on anymore.”

“Why didn’t they give the position to someone else, if everyone disliked Dr. Overbeck so much?” Nina asked.