Pushing Murder (4 page)

She was tugging at my covers. I slapped her hand, then kissed it.

“Let me alone, idiot, and sit down. I don't know what you've done, but we're all very interested in finding out.”

Dan had closed the door quickly, and now he and Sadd stood at the foot of the bed in that confused state of embarrassment and distress that men exhibit when women make scenes. Janet sank into the chair Dan had pushed to the bed, her face in her hands.

The door opened, and Dr. Cullen walked in with Sister Agnes. I felt a wild desire to laugh. Were introductions in order? How about, “Dr. Cullen, Sister, this is a dear friend who says she's responsible for the attacks on my life”? The nice doctor saved me by merely saying, “You have visitors—we won't stay. How do you feel?”

“Much better.”

She left, nodding with a smile to the visitors she'd met, and politely ignoring the bowed figure of the one she had not. Sister did the same but could not resist a compassionate glance at poor Janet.

As the door shut Dan said, “Mrs. Folsom, please tell us what this is all about.”

Janet wiped her eyes, straightened in the chair, and said, “The whole ghastly business began—”

She broke off, eyes wide, staring at the scattered Christmas cards on my bed.

“My God—is that your mail?” She stood up, pawing through it. “Is there more?” She upended the tote, and its contents went flying. We watched her, transfixed. “Not here. Not here yet. Or else he's got it. When did all this come?”

Sadd said, “I picked it up from Clara's box this morning.”

“Then it's a wonder you're still alive.” She stared at him. “Or is this yesterday's mail?”

“It's everything since Sunday. Today's hasn't been delivered yet.” Sadd sounded amazingly sane, considering Janet's exhibition.

The door opened again, and Henry walked in, pulling off his scarf. “Tina's holding down the office.” He took in our tense tableau. “Am I de trop?”

“Not at all, dear.” Was
I
managing to sound sane? “Janet, this is my son, Henry. Henry, this is a friend of mine, Janet Folsom, who says she did it and is here to confess all.”

“Don't joke, Clara.” She shook hands with Henry nervously. “I did do it—or as good as did it.” She began to weep again.

Dan was picking up the scattered objects from the tote, and Sadd rescued the coat and hung it in the closet. I hauled myself up straighter in bed and said, “Dan, lock that door.”

“You can't lock hospital doors, Mrs. Gamadge.”

“Then put a chair against it, and sit on it, and somebody sit on Dan. Nobody's getting in here till we have Janet's story.”

Henry picked up the phone. “No calls to Room Two-twenty. Mrs. Gamadge needs rest. This is her son. I'll stop for messages later.”

They dispersed about the room. Sadd in the plastic armchair, Henry beside him, Dan leaning on the windowsill, snow starting up again behind him. Janet remained by my bed, her eyes fixed on my face. Then, something, not a premonition—I don't have them—made me say, “I don't want the police in on this. Promise me, Henry.”

The three men said, “Why?”

Now I knew what that “something” was; it had been dawning on me fuzzily ever since Janet burst in. Someone whom she and I knew was trying to kill me, and I was about to learn who it was. Did I know this someone's family? parents? husband? wife? Quite possibly. The thought of the shock and grief in store for them oppressed me. I must try to spare them what I could. The police couldn't and wouldn't.

Janet's eyes had not left mine. I was sure she knew my thoughts. She said, “Don't promise her, Henry.”

He said, “Start talking, Mrs. Folsom.”

Janet cleared her throat. She spoke calmly now, looking down at her clasped hands. “About thirty years ago—1965 to be precise—I opened a home for children of Cuban refugees. It was the year Castro allowed them to leave and they poured over. The homelessness and hardships were awful. I wanted to model my home on Pearl Buck's Welcome House, the place she started in the forties for Asian children. My husband and I—he's been dead many years—always admired Mrs. Buck. I bought a big old farmhouse in a town called Bryantville in central Connecticut and staffed it mostly with people from the town. They were all wonderful. Except one.”

Her eyes went to the blurry white window behind Dan. None of us moved. Perhaps trying to delay the revelation, I said, “I remember the place. Didn't you call it St. Elizabeth's Home?”

“Yes. For Mother Elizabeth Seton. She had children. Well, it went marvelously for about three years. From the start, donations poured in, and we began to accumulate more money than we needed. That can be worse than not having enough. Often when places of this kind get too affluent, they're wide open for all kinds of scams and hanky-panky.”

Sadd said, “Boys Town, for one.”

“Yes—remember that scandal? But they recouped honorably. You can only respect that. Of course, we were a much smaller operation, and most of the money was mine. Even so, when the blow fell…” Janet took a tissue from her pocketbook and blew her nose. Her eyes came back to mine.

“The director of St. Elizabeth's, whom I'd chosen myself, was a man named Allen Quinn. He came with glowing letters of recommendation from some bishop in New Mexico, but I must confess”—now her look went askew—“that it was his personality that sold me. He was a good-looking man in his forties, and he radiated charm and capability. The staff adored him, the kids adored him, and I adored him, right up to the minute that he disappeared with all the money.”

Janet stopped talking, and there was utter silence. Then Sadd said briskly, “How about elevenses?”

“Good idea.” Henry stood up. “Where's your sherry, Mom?” I pointed to the bedside cabinet. “Did you ever catch the charming rascal, Mrs. Folsom?”

“No.”

Dan said, “But you tried to and in the process found out that his references had all been faked.”

“Everything about him was fake”—Janet smiled wanly—“including his name. The references were on letterhead stolen from the bishop's office during a fund-raising campaign for the diocese—I don't have to tell you what happened to the funds. The bishop told me his investigation revealed that this man had been in prison under the name Howard de Lamier, and that he'd run through a number of other philanthropies, always managing to evaporate.”

There was an imperious knock on the door, and Dan admitted the nurse with my pill. This time it was the sherry bottle in Henry's hand that caught her disapproving eye, and she stopped dead.

“I haven't had any yet,” I said hastily.

She poured water from my jug, handed me the enormous pellet—why are they always the size of something you'd give a horse?—and watched me down it. Then she went out, her walk suggesting that she was rolling her eyes to heaven.

Janet spoke now without moving a muscle. “Of course we tried to trace him, and of course we had no luck. My donors were wonderful. Some of them suggested that we launch a drive to start again, but how could they know the amount of capital it had taken? It wouldn't have been fair to my other charities. St. Elizabeth's closed less than a year later. Fortunately, I was kept busy during that time finding homes for the children, and I almost forgot Allen Quinn, alias Howard de Lamier, alias God-knows-who. I hadn't thought of him in years till last week when I saw him at his wedding. You were there too, Clara.”

My heart gave a great lurch.

“He was marrying Sal. His new name is Dwight Dunlop.”

5

Dan jerked away from the window, and it was the only motion in the room. A dazed question was forming in my head, but I couldn't speak; I could only recall Dwight Dunlop's jovial presence beside my bed yesterday. Sadd and Henry simply stared at Janet, and she appeared unable to look at any of us. Her flamboyant outrage was gone, her composure was gone, and she sat with closed eyes, tears streaming from beneath the lids.

I somehow got out my question. “Janet … if you've threatened to expose him—I assume you have—why isn't it
you
he wants to kill?”

“Oh, wouldn't he love to!” Her eyes flew open. “Unfortunately for him, I was in Denver all last week at a UNICEF meeting.” She gulped. “And like a fool, I'd gone and involved you.”

“How?”

Dan said, “You wrote to Mrs. Gamadge about him, and he knows it.”

She nodded wretchedly. “I did everything wrong. I was desperate to protect Sal. Oh, I've botched it so badly!”

“Janet”—I took hold of her wrist, my curiosity getting the better of my dismay—“describe the awful moment when you recognized him.”

She loosened my fingers, got up, and began to move about the room tugging at the neck of her exquisite silk blouse. The string of the scapular came into sight, and she thrust it back with shaking fingers. She said, “I was late for that wedding. I don't know if you remember.”

“Yes, I do. The house was jammed.” I looked at the others. “Sal's son and his wife gave it. They have a nice big house in New Jersey, and there must have been fifty or sixty—”

“Clara,” said Sadd, “you sound like a society columnist covering an earthquake.”

“Sorry. Go on, Jan.”

“I spotted you when I came in so I went over to say hello.”

“I remember. I remember.”

“Sal and—and that man were in front of the fireplace with some people around them. I saw her first and—”

“—and you said, ‘Doesn't Sal look happy?'”

“And then I saw him. I turned around quickly and told you I needed the bathroom.”

“I remember. I remember. You said you'd be right back, and you never came.”

“God, no.” Janet's hand went to her throat again. She came back to her chair. “I prayed he hadn't seen me. I thought he hadn't. But the next night the phone rang. He was calling from some restaurant where he and Sal were having dinner.”

There was a tap on the door, and a nurse I'd never seen before locked in. “Lunchtime. I understand your meals are brought up from the cafeteria. Who is—”

“Jeeze, I'm a fine one!” Dan slapped his head. “What'll it be, Mrs. Gamadge?”

“Forget it. I couldn't eat a bite.”

“Now what have I done?” wailed Janet as the nurse withdrew. “You need to keep your strength up, and I've completely wiped out your appetite.”

“Go on, Mrs. Folsom,” said my unfeeling son. “He called you from the restaurant.”

“Yes, and you never heard a more pitiful and pleading account of his ‘reform.' He was through with scams, he was on the straight and narrow. Did I want to destroy Sal's happiness and his? Surely I would not expose him when he'd finally found true love and peace of mind.”

“Little Gloria, happy at last,” murmured Sadd.

“But you weren't buying,” said Dan.

“You bet I wasn't.” Janet stood up again, hesitated, then walked to the closet and took out her coat. “I told him—making the biggest mistake of my life—that I'd give him twenty-four hours to get out of Sal's life. He asked me if I knew what it would do to her morale if he went, and I said I knew what it would do to her bank account if he stayed. More protestations of a new leaf, et cetera, but I knew he was about as reformable as Beelzebub—and wasn't I just proved right!” Angrily, she pulled on her coat.

Henry said, “It didn't occur to you to fake belief in him till you could go to the police?”

“With what?” Janet sat down again clutching her coat. “Sure, I had the stuff from St. Elizabeth's, but that was thirty years ago. Even if I could have dug up something recent, all I could think of was the inquiries and the litigation and Sal's prolonged horror and humiliation, and I just decided to get rid of him quick. So I said, ‘You heard me—twenty-four hours,' and he said could he have till Sunday, the day the store opened, because it would break Sal's heart if he went before that.” Her voice shook. “My own heart was just about breaking, so I said, ‘Okay, Sunday,' and then I blew it.”

Sadd said, “You told him you were writing to Clara.”

“Yes.” She looked at me tragically. “I said, ‘But all this is going in a letter to Clara Gamadge—you've met her—and she and I will go to Sal together. The letter will be mailed Sunday, the day of the party, and she'll have it by Tuesday so you'd better be gone.'”

Tuesday. Today. All three men checked watches. Dan looked at me. “Noon. What time does your mail come?”

“Around two,” I said. “Janet, did he ask you not to speak to me before the letter arrived?”

“He didn't ask, he
told
me not to—or I'd be sorry. But I panicked and had to call you and tell you what I'd done—and oh, God, it's so much worse than what I
thought
I'd done!”

She began to tremble violently, huddling in the chair. In a flash, Dan was at my side, his hand outstretched. “The key to your mailbox.”

“Mr. Saddlier has it.”

Dan swung his hand toward Sadd, who dug in his pocket. Janet was off the chair. “I'm going with you.”

“No way, Mrs. Folsom.” Dan was definite. “You're still in Denver if you want to keep living. Get in a cab and go straight back to the Plaza. Don't open your door to anybody till I can get protection for you. If I didn't know Dunlop had other business today, I wouldn't let you go alone.”

I said nervously, “I don't suppose not having a key to the mailbox will faze him.”

“Piece of cake.” Dan was at the door. “He's probably on your street right now waiting for the delivery.”

“Good luck to him in this weather.” Sadd shuddered, and I said hastily, “All my keys are on that ring, Dan. Wait in the vestibule. I don't care if he freezes, but you don't have to.”