No Place Like Home (37 page)

“Let's get pictures of Robin Carpenter and Charley Hatch and show them to the maître d', the bartender, and all the waiters at Patsy's,” Jeff said. “I think we have enough to get a judge to let us access her phone records. We'll subpoena her credit card charges, and her E-ZPass statement. We've already got the judge's order to get Charley Hatch's phone records. We should be receiving them later today. We'd better take a look at his credit cards and E-ZPass as well. Either Carpenter or the ex-wife is lying. Let's find out which it is.”

“I don't see Lena Santini as a liar,” Ortiz objected. “She was quoting what Charley told her about Robin Carpenter. By the way, she even asked if she could put a couple of those carved figures of his in the coffin. I told her we couldn't release them.”

“Too bad she didn't ask for that skull and crossbones Charley carved in the Nolans' front door,” Mort Shelley observed dryly. “That was good craftsmanship. I was surprised to see that it was still there yesterday.”

“Yes, we had plenty of time to stare at those doors when Celia Nolan wouldn't let us in,” Paul Walsh said mildly. “I understand that you're planning to see her today, Jeff.”

“I'm not seeing her today,” Jeff said shortly. “When I called her she referred me to her lawyer, Benjamin Fletcher.”

“Benjamin Fletcher!” Mort Shelley exclaimed.
“He was Little Lizzie's lawyer! Why on earth would Celia Nolan go to him?”

“He got her off once before, didn't he?” Walsh asked quietly.

“Got who off?”

“Liza Barton, who else?” Walsh asked.

Jeff, Mort, and Angelo stared at him. Enjoying the astonishment on their faces, Paul Walsh smiled. “I lay odds with you that the deranged ten-year-old who shot her mother and stepfather has now resurfaced as Celia Nolan, a woman who flipped when she found herself back in home sweet home.”

“You're absolutely crazy,” Jeff snapped. “And you're the reason she ran to get a lawyer. She'd have cooperated with us if you hadn't been in her face about the time it took her to drive home from Holland Road.”

“I have taken the time to look up Celia Nolan's background. She is adopted. She is thirty-four years old, exactly Liza Barton's present age. We all felt the impact of seeing her in those riding clothes yesterday, and I'll tell you why. I'll admit she's taller than Audrey Barton. And her hair is darker than Audrey Barton's, but I suggest that is because of her visits to the salon—I happened to notice that her roots are growing in blond. So I'm making a flat statement: Audrey Barton was Celia Nolan's mother.”

Jeff sat silently for a minute, not wanting to believe what he was beginning to believe—that perhaps Paul Walsh was on to something.

“After I saw Celia Nolan in riding clothes, I made a few inquiries. She's taking lessons at the Washington Valley Riding Club. Her teacher is Zach Willet, who happens to be the teacher who was giving Will Barton riding lessons at the time of his death, the result of a fall with his horse,” Walsh continued, barely able to conceal his satisfaction at the impact he was making on his colleagues.

“If Celia Nolan
is
Liza Barton, do you think she holds Zach Willet responsible for her father's death?” Mort asked quietly.

“Let me put it this way: if I were Zach Willet, I wouldn't want to be alone with that lady for long,” Walsh answered.

“Your theory, Paul—and it is still a theory—completely overlooks the fact that the house was vandalized by Charley Hatch,” Jeff told him. “Are you suggesting that Celia Nolan knew Charley Hatch?”

“No, I am not, and I accept the fact that she never met Georgette before a week ago Tuesday when she moved into the house. I
do
say that she became unbalanced when she saw the writing on the lawn and the doll with the gun and the skull and crossbones and the splattered paint. She wanted revenge on the people who put her in that position. She was the one who found Georgette's body. If she is Liza Barton, there's an explanation for why she knew her way home. Her grandmother lived only a few streets away from Holland
Road. She admits that she was driving past the house where Hatch was working in the exact time frame when he was killed. Even those pictures we found are a way of begging us to recognize her.”

“That still doesn't fly so far as blaming Celia Nolan for killing Hatch. How would she have found out that he was the one who vandalized the house?” Ortiz asked Walsh.

“The garbageman was talking about Clyde Earley taking Hatch's sneakers and jeans and carvings out of the trash bag,” Walsh responded.

Jeff began to feel solid ground for his instinctive reaction to Walsh's theory. “Are you suggesting that Celia Nolan, even if she is Liza Barton, happened to hear the gossip of a garbageman, figured out where Charley Hatch, whom she'd never met, was working, somehow got him to be standing at the break of the hedge in the road, shot him and then went off to have a riding lesson?”

“She put herself on that road at the right time,” Walsh insisted stubbornly.

“Yes, she did. And if you hadn't pushed her against the wall she might be talking to me right now and telling me something that would be helpful to us about seeing another car on the road or a person on foot. Paul, you want to pin everything on Celia Nolan, and I agree that it will make a great story: ‘Little Lizzie Strikes Again.' I'm telling you that someone else hired Charley Hatch. I don't for a minute believe Earley's story. It's too pat, too convenient. I bet Clyde went through that garbage
when it was on Hatch's property. I wouldn't be surprised if he took it and Hatch knew it was gone. Then Earley could come back and put it in the trash barrel again and wait to have a convenient witness see him open it after it's been abandoned. If Hatch panicked, whoever hired him may have panicked as well. And my guess is that Georgette Grove learned who ordered the vandalism and paid for it with her life.”

“Jeff, you'd have made a great defense lawyer for Celia Nolan. She is very attractive, isn't she? I've noticed the way you look at her.”

When he saw the prosecutor's icy stare, Walsh realized he had gone too far. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “But I stand by my theory.”

“When this case is over, I am sure you'll be happier reassigned to another division in the office,” Jeff said. “You're a smart man, Paul, and you could be a good detective, except for one thing—you get a theory, and you're like a dog with a bone. You don't keep an open mind and never have, and frankly, I'm sick and tired of it
and
of you. Here is what we're going to do now.

“We should be getting Charley Hatch's phone records later today. Mort, you prepare an affidavit for the judge to get the phone records of not only Robin Carpenter, but also of Henry Paley and Ted Cartwright—both their personal and business phones. I want to know about all incoming and outgoing calls any of them made or received over the past two months. I think we have sufficient grounds
to ask for them. I also want Carpenter's and Hatch's credit card bills and E-ZPass statements. And I am going to petition the Family Court to allow us to unseal the adoption records of Liza Barton.”

Jeff looked at Paul Walsh. “I will lay you odds that even if Celia Nolan
is
Liza Barton, she is a victim of what is going on. I have always believed that as a child, Liza was the victim of Ted Cartwright's misdeeds, and I believe that now, for whatever reason, someone is trying to trap Celia Nolan into being accused of committing these murders.”

W
hen I left Benjamin Fletcher's office, I drove around aimlessly for a while trying to decide if I should have told him I was Liza Barton, or if I even should have gone to see him at all. His horrible statement that my mother had been having an affair with Ted while she was married to my father infuriated me, even while I recognized the bitter truth that she had certainly been in love with Ted when she married him.

I told myself that the plus of hiring Fletcher was that it was obvious he despised Paul Walsh, and would be a tiger in keeping him from harassing me. Hiring Fletcher also would ease my explanation to Alex of my refusal to cooperate with the prosecutor's office. I reasonably could say that everything that has happened seems to be connected to the Liza Barton case, and therefore I went straight to Liza Barton's lawyer for help. It seemed like a natural thing to do.

I knew that eventually I would have to tell Alex the truth about myself—and risk losing him—but
I didn't want to do it yet. If I could only remember exactly what my mother shouted at Ted that night, I felt sure I would have the key to why he threw her at me, and perhaps even the answer to whether or not I shot him deliberately.

In all the pictures I drew for Dr. Moran when I was a child, the gun is in midair. No hand is touching it. I know the impact of my mother's body caused it to go off in my hand the first time. I only wish I could somehow prove that when I shot Ted I was in a catatonic state.

Zach was the key to answering all these questions. All these years, I have never considered that my father's death was anything but an accident. But now, as I try to piece together my mother's final words, I can't find the missing ones:

“You told me when you were drunk . . . Zach saw you . . . ”

What did Ted tell my mother? And what did Zach see?

It was only ten o'clock. I called the office of the
Daily Record
and was told that all back issues of the newspaper were on microfilm in the county library on Randolph Street. At ten thirty I was in the reference room of the library, requesting the microfilm of the newspapers that included May 9th, the day my father died, twenty-seven years ago.

Of course, the minute I started to read the May 9th edition, I realized that any account of my father's death would be printed the next day. I
glanced through the columns anyhow, and noticed that an antique-gun marksmanship contest was scheduled that day at Jockey Hollow at noon. Twenty antique-gun collectors were competing, including the prominent Morris County collector, Ted Cartwright.

I looked at the picture of Ted. He was in his late thirties then, his hair still dark, a swaggering, devil-may-care look about him. He was staring at the camera, holding in his hand the gun he planned to use in the contest.

I hurriedly moved the microfilm to the next day. On the front page I found the story about my father: “Will Barton, Award-winning Architect, Dies in Riding Accident.”

The picture of my father was exactly as I remember him—the thoughtful eyes that always held a hint of a smile, the aristocratic nose and mouth, the full head of dark blond hair. If he had lived, he would be in his sixties now. I found myself playing the dangerous game of wondering what my life would have been like if he were still alive, if that horrible night had never happened.

The newspaper account of his accident was the same as the one Zach Willet had told me. Other people heard my father tell Zach that he'd start walking his horse on the trail instead of waiting for Zach to get the stone out of his own horse's hoof. No one had seen my father go on the trail, which was clearly marked
DANGER. DO NOT ENTER
. The consensus of opinion was that something may have
frightened the horse, and that “Barton, an inexperienced rider, was unable to control him.”

Then I read the sentence that seemed to explode before my eyes: “A groom, Herbert West, who was exercising a horse on a nearby trail, reported hearing a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot at the time that Mr. Barton would have been near the fork in the road that led to the treacherous slope.”

“A loud noise that sounded like a gunshot.”

I moved the microfilm until I came to the sports pages of that day's edition. Ted Cartwright was holding a trophy in one hand and an old Colt .22 target auto pistol in the other. He had won the marksmanship contest, and the article said he was going to celebrate by having lunch at the Peapack Club with friends, and then was going for a long horseback ride. “I've been so busy practicing my marksmanship that I haven't had a decent ride for weeks,” he told the reporter.

My father died at three o'clock—plenty of time for Ted to have had lunch and gone out for a ride, traveling along the trail that leads to the Washington Valley trails. Was it possible he came upon my father, the man who had taken my mother from him, perhaps saw him struggling to control the horse he was riding?

It was possible, but it was all conjecture. There was only one way I could learn the truth, and that was from Zach Willet.

I printed out the articles—the one about my
father's accident and the one about Ted winning the marksmanship contest. It was time to pick up Jack. I left the library, got in my car, and drove to St. Joe's.

Today I could tell by Jack's woebegone face that the morning hadn't gone well. He didn't want to talk about what had happened, but by the time we got home, and were sitting in the kitchen having lunch, he was starting to open up.