Don't Cry Over Killed Milk (20 page)

Chapter 20

The following morning, Damon woke up feeling despondent. He had convinced himself that Bethany found a suitor she preferred to Damon. And he didn’t know whether the police would be able to find sufficient evidence to put away anyone for Jeremiah’s murder.

Damon walked the yellow Labrador for Mrs. Chenworth, gave a statement at the police station as Gerry had requested, and then spent a quiet afternoon volunteering at the Hollydale library and an even quieter evening in the Crime Solvers’ office. Not a single call came in, and his mind wandered. In addition to Jeremiah’s unsolved murder, the circumstances surrounding the deaths of Dottie Milk’s daughter-in-law and grandson still nagged at him.

The next morning, Wednesday, Damon walked to the Milk residence. Dottie was in front of the house, perched on the lowest rung of a metal stepladder. Armed with a wide putty knife, she scraped loose paint from wind-beaten wood siding.

Damon stopped on the sidewalk behind her. “Good morning, Mrs. Milk.”

Dottie turned and looked at Damon. She smiled. “Good morning to you, Mr. Lassard.”

“Are you planning to repaint?”

“I am. I’m going to sell this place now that Jeremiah’s gone.”

Damon offered to relieve her of scraping duty for a few minutes.

Dottie accepted and went inside to fetch lemonade. When she returned, Damon—who was three rungs high—gratefully accepted a glass. He took a long swallow and set the glass on a step of the ladder.

“When are you heading back to Arizona?” Damon asked over his shoulder.

“Probably next week,” Dottie replied, sweeping loose fragments into a neat pile. “You know, the police contacted me yesterday. They asked me a number of question about Dominic Freeze.”

Damon turned and looked down. “I’ve been talking with Detective Sloman,” he said. “We think there’s a good chance Dominic was involved in Jeremiah’s murder.”

“I should have known.” Dottie shook her head in disdain. “He was an evil little boy then. I’m not surprised he turned into a monster of a man.”

Damon provided Dottie with an abridged version of the harm Jeremiah had inflicted on Dominic Freeze. He told her that Alistair Atwater gave Jeremiah a substantial sum for working with Matthew but left out Matthew’s involvement with Jeremiah’s plans and the story about Dominic burning Jeremiah’s fingers. He didn’t want Dottie to go through any further emotional distress.

“The police told me the same thing,” Dottie said when Jeremiah finished. “Shame on Jeremiah for not being a bigger person. But that didn’t give Dominic Freeze the right to engage in vigilante justice.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Damon said. “Unfortunately, the police don’t have anything that specifically links Dominic to Jeremiah’s death.”

Dottie frowned. “Between that terrible man’s motive and his history of torturing Jeremiah, you’d think it would be enough.”

Damon didn’t agree with Dottie on that point but kept his mouth shut. He took a step up on the ladder and began to chip paint in earnest. It reminded him of sloughing off dead skin from a sunburn. With his back to Dottie, Damon said, “Mrs. Milk, there’s something that’s been bothering me.” He paused, then pushed on. “Can you tell me about the night your daughter-in-law and grandson died?”

Damon heard Dottie stop sweeping. After a moment, she said, “I didn’t know whether you had heard about Kathryn and Samuel.”

“I did,” Damon said, still facing the house. “They both died of natural causes, hours apart.”

“It sounds like you already know the story then,” she said timidly.

“Most of it, yes.” He scraped a chip of paint the size of a playing card from the woodwork and watched it flutter to the ground. “But I’ve been wondering why you didn’t call 911 or take Samuel to the hospital after you found him.”

Damon heard a shuffling movement behind him and turned his head. Dottie was dragging a wooden rocker from the front porch. She lugged it to near the base of the ladder and settled herself on it. “I suppose I can tell you. I told Lieutenant Hobbes yesterday. She had the same gut feeling as you do—that there was a bit more to the story, something only Jeremiah and I knew. I’ve always felt so guilty about it.”

Damon turned back to the house. He suspected it might be easier for Dottie to speak if she didn’t have to face him.

“Two days before their deaths, I was taking care of Samuel while Kathryn was shopping and Jeremiah was out here, shoveling snow. The baby just wouldn’t stop crying. I don’t know why. So I….” Dottie choked back tears. “I shook him in frustration. I only did it one time, and it wasn’t hard. But I did it.”

“And you told Jeremiah?” Damon asked.

“He saw me do it. I was upstairs with Samuel in his nursery, and I hadn’t heard Jeremiah come in from outside. As soon as I shook Samuel, I felt Jeremiah’s presence in the doorframe behind me. I explained to him that I’d never done it before and I wouldn’t ever again. That was the truth. I regretted shaking Samuel as soon as I’d done it. Jeremiah gave me a tongue lashing, but I’m fairly certain he didn’t tell Kathryn—her attitude toward me didn’t change in the days between the incident and her death. At the time, I wasn’t worried about Samuel’s health. Babies get jostled around in strollers all of the time without any long term harm. As long as I never did it again, I was sure Samuel would be just fine.”

“And then he stopped breathing two nights later.”

“Yes,” Dottie said. “Jeremiah had gone to the hospital with Kathryn. When I went to check on Samuel and found him dead, I panicked. I had no idea whether or not he died because I shook him. Every time I think about it, which is quite often, I tell myself that one small shake couldn’t have caused his death two days later. But of course, I have no idea if that’s really true, and I never will.” She sniffed. “My first inclination was to call 911, then I thought about the consequences. Jeremiah could be temperamental. If I called for an ambulance and went with Samuel to the hospital, Jeremiah might react on the spot and scream out in front of anyone who was around to listen that I was responsible for the baby’s death. I was scared of being sent to prison for my mistake. And Samuel was already dead, I reasoned. I might not be a doctor, but there was no doubt in my mind that he’d passed any point of being saved.”

“So you waited for Jeremiah to come home.”

“I did. He didn’t accuse me as I feared. Rather, in a voice resigned to fate, he said that he was taking Samuel to the hospital, and I should start packing my things. After the funeral, he wanted me out of the house.”

“That’s why you moved to Arizona?”

“Yes. The house was in my name, but I didn’t push Jeremiah on the matter. The whole ordeal was incredibly hard on me. I moved into a retirement community for older adults. I have friends there now, so I’ve decided to stay in Arizona. Between selling this house and the money Jeremiah had left in his bank account, I can comfortably live out my days there.”

“Jeremiah left his money to you, then?”

Dottie laughed nervously. “He didn’t have a will, so I think it’ll pass to me through probate. I must say that I was quite surprised when Cameron Williams from True Capital told me Jeremiah had $400,000 in the bank.”

“It was from Alistair Atwater,” Damon said.

“I suppose so. I believe Jeremiah had forgiven me, you know. We never stopped talking, even after I moved to Arizona. At first our conversations were stilted, but time and distance healed a lot of wounds.”

Dottie rose from her chair and moved it back to the porch. Damon took that as his cue to leave and descended the stepladder. As he stepped to the ground, the image of Dominic Freeze burning Jeremiah’s fingertips reentered his mind. He focused his thoughts on the other boy, the one who had been with Dominic while he bound Jeremiah’s hands but had been too frightened to go any further.

“Mrs. Milk,” Damon said and approached the front porch. “Do you remember the names of any of the other boys who were in Dominic’s childhood clique? The ones who teased Jeremiah?”

“Not specifically,” Dottie said. “But if you gave me some names, one might ring a bell.”

One by one, Damon walked Dottie through a list of men, including Lawrence Drake, Milt Verblanc, the male Park Police officer, and even Emmanuel Alvarez despite his advanced age.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Lassard. None of those names is familiar to me,” Dottie said.

Damon sighed. He tried Matthew’s father, Geoffrey Katz, for good measure, but Dottie hadn’t heard of him either.

Damon finished his lemonade and handed the empty glass to Dottie. “Does Dominic Freeze’s family still live in Hollydale?” he asked. Despite his position with the citizens association, there were numerous families he didn’t know.

Dottie shook her head. “No. They moved just after Jeremiah and Dominic finished ninth grade. I heard Sebastian, Dominic’s stepfather, got a job at a commercial apple juice mill down in North Carolina. He started in the winter and moved down south a few months before the rest of the family. Jackie Freeze didn’t want to uproot Dominic or his stepsister in the middle of the school year. I remember, some of the other women in Hollydale helped Jackie pack boxes. Not me.”

Damon’s ears tingled. “Dominic Freeze had a stepsister?”

“He did,” Dottie said. “Is that important?”

“I don’t know,” Damon admitted. “Were they close?”

“Michelle and Dominic? I have no idea. She was quite a few years younger than him.”

“Do you remember what she looked like?”

“Unfortunately, Damon, I don’t recall anything about Michelle’s appearance that would stand out. She had straight brown hair. She must have looked similar to half of the girls her age.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Milk. I don’t know whether it’ll help, but it’s good information to have. You said Dominic and Michelle were stepsiblings. Did Michelle go by the name Freeze?”

“I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure she went by her father’s last name: Walczak.”

* * *

Dominic made a beeline to the Hollydale branch library. He ran a search of newspaper articles for Michelle Walczak using his Lexis account. No hits. A Google search for Dominic’s stepsister was equally fruitless.

Damon closed his eyes and thought. Might she have a connection to one of the park workers? Damon was convinced that Dominic Freeze had worked with an insider at Tripping Falls to murder Jeremiah. If Dominic’s stepsister was several years younger than him, she would probably be in her early thirties. Pretty young to be dating Lawrence Drake or Milt Verblanc, he thought. Was Michelle the lover of one of the
women
at the park? Or perhaps Michelle Walczak could
be
one of the female staffers. After all, Jeremiah had created his own false identity. Both Alex Rancor and Aylin Erul appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties. Veronica was a few years older.

Damon longed to have a photograph of Michelle Walczak from her youth. But where could he find one? Damon’s brain clicked and he briskly walked a half mile to the elementary school that served Hollydale.

* * *

Diane Ridgeway, Ashbury Elementary’s assistant principal, exuded vivacity. She pumped Damon’s hand when he entered her office, and before Damon even sat down she was touting the school’s attributes.

Diane finally sat behind her desk and gave Damon a wide grin. “Now, how can I help you, Mr. Lassard?”

Damon returned her smile. Diane was in her late forties and had a pinched nose that didn’t fit her outgoing personality. “I’m looking for old yearbooks from Ashbury. Ones that date back twenty to twenty-five years ago.”

Diane beamed. “That’s easy. We have a shelf full of yearbooks in the school’s library. I believe they go back at least thirty years.” She looked at Damon inquisitively. “May I ask who or what you’re looking for?”

Damon hesitated. He mumbled something about genealogy research for a friend.

Diane eyed Damon curiously but didn’t comment. Instead she gave him directions to the library.

As Damon stood to leave the assistant principal’s office, he noticed that the fourth finger on Diane Ridgeway’s left hand was bereft of a ring. Inspiration hit, albeit on a matter completely unrelated to his mission to track down Michele Walczak.

“Ms. Ridgeway,” Damon stammered. “I know this may seem a bit unconventional, but I was hoping to ask you something on a personal level.”

Diane squinted at Damon. “Go ahead,” she said with caution.

Damon plunged forward. “I noticed that you aren’t wearing a wedding band. I have a neighbor. His name is David. I think you two would make a great match, if you’re not seeing anyone and are willing to go on a blind date.”