Seven Sisters (30 page)

“Okay, just assuming ...”—I gave Mattie Lee an apologetic look—“...
pretending
that this horrible rumor had some truth to it, why do you think anyone would do such a terrible thing?”

Leona shook her head. “Who knows, Benni? With what I’ve seen in my ninety-two years I’m only certain about one thing. Just when you think human beings can’t sink any lower, they do. On the other hand, there’s more good bein’ done out there than bad. So far, anyway.”

“Maybe it was for the insurance,” Selma Gonzales suggested. She’d been a legal secretary for fifty years and had a kind and intelligently practical view of every situation. “That’s always a consideration.”

“Did people insure babies back then?” I asked.

“Maybe one of the older sisters did it out of jealousy,” Leona said. “Or the judge himself because he thought they weren’t his children.”

“Rose Brown committing adultery?” Mattie Lee exclaimed. “Why, I can’t even imagine that.”

Leona gave Mattie Lee a disgusted look.

“Maybe it was Rose’s sister,” Juby said. “She was an old maid. Heard she had a crush on the judge her whole life. Maybe
she
killed the babies out of jealousy.”

“There was the nanny, too,” Selma offered.

“Or the butler,” Martha added with a giggle.

“Oh, girls,” Thelma said. “They didn’t have a butler.”

I sat back in my chair, my head spinning. These ladies had just handed me even more suspects than I’d started with. That was certainly not my intention when I started questioning them.

“That nanny, Eva something-or-other,” Leona said. “I heard she’s still living.”

Knoll, I filled in silently. The nanny who was Mr. Foglino’s mother’s best friend’s neighbor.

“Still living?” Mattie Lee said. “My goodness, she’d be ninety-six or -seven. Would she even be able to—”

“To what?” Leona said, narrowing one pale eye in Mattie Lee’s direction. “Be
coherent
?”

Mattie Lee’s face turned pink, and she leaned back over the quilt, stitching furiously.

“What was her last name?” I asked, just to double-check Mr. Foglino’s information.

“Knoll,” Leona said, her voice triumphant. “Her name is Eva Knoll. Pretty good for someone in her
nineties
, don’t you think?”

“Does anyone know where she lives?” I asked, sitting forward in my seat. Next to talking to Rose Brown again, the nanny who was there when the babies died would be a great source of information.

The women shook their heads no.

“After the last baby died, she was let go,” Leona said. “Rumors were she was paid to go away. That tells me there was something fishy going on.”

“Did you hear where she went?” I asked, unrolling some white thread and snipping it off.

“Don’t reckon she’d go far,” Leona said, “if I remember right.” She glared at Mattie Lee. “And I do believe I do. Her only family was her father and a child. A boy, I think. Most likely she settled in San Celina County somewhere.”

“Do any of you ever see or talk to Rose Brown?” I asked.

“Huh!” Leona snorted. “Miss High-and-Mighty Brown leave her private tower and walk among the heathens? Don’t think so.”

“Now, Leona,” Juby said, shaking her head of poodle hair. “You know Rose is not able to socialize.” She gave me a kind look. “Rose Brown has her own suite on the other side of the home, near the offices. She doesn’t take her meals with us. But she has good girls. They visit her regularly and hired her private nurses. Tell you the truth, I don’t really know why she’s here and not at her lovely home, but they say she didn’t want to die there. I don’t think she’s quite all there, poor dear.”

The conversation drifted slowly away from the Browns and back to their own lives and the doings of their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I didn’t push it, figuring I got what I needed—a confirmation of Eva Knoll’s identity.

When our hour session was over, we had a quick business meeting. I showed them the check for the quilt.

“What would you all like done with it?” I asked. Though we had a guild account, they often liked donating it to the Oak Terrace Friendship Fund. It provided bingo and snack money for people in the retirement home who had no families and were barely making ends meet.

“Donate it to the Friendship Fund,” Thelma said. “We have plenty in our account.” The others nodded in agreement.

After hugging and kissing everyone good-bye, I went upstairs to the offices to take the check to the accounting clerk. After shooting the breeze with her, I walked down the long corridor toward the exit, passing by a large, airy sunroom. Normally crowded, it was empty this early evening. The large clock over the gurgling fountain read five o’clock. Dinner was served at five-thirty, so everyone was probably in their rooms getting ready.

Everyone except Rose Brown. She was, to my surprise, sitting in a wheelchair alone, gazing out the picture window at the English rose garden and beyond at the cars driving by on the highway below. I hesitated for a few seconds, then decided that this might be my only chance to speak to her, so I’d better grab it. She was dressed in expensive-looking camel slacks and a brown cashmere sweater. Good leather shoes covered her small feet. In her lap, on top of a nubby, hand-knitted throw, her hands clutched a neat leather purse that matched her shoes. She didn’t turn around or even react when I walked up behind her and softly called her name.

“Mrs. Brown,” I said again, a little louder, and walked around so she could see me.

She looked up, her aqua eyes cloudy with age. Really looking at her this time, I realized what a beautiful woman she must have been. And how much Bliss favored her.

“Mrs. Brown, my name is Benni Harper. We talked the other day at the wine tasting.”

She nodded mutely. Her face was slack today, traces of spittle pooled in the corners of her pale pink mouth. It was hard to believe she was the same woman I’d talked to only a few days ago, but I knew how, at this age, good days and bad days were as unpredictable as our Central Coast winds.

“Can I ask you some questions? It won’t take long, I promise.”

She blinked slowly and nodded again.

I hesitated again. Questioning someone this elderly, this helpless, seemed cruel and heartless. And, considering her condition today, so much worse than a few days ago at the wine tasting, maybe even pointless.

And what about those babies?
I heard Detective Hudson’s voice in my head.

I swallowed and said, “I’m sorry about your babies, Mrs. Brown.”

Her eyes looked into mine at the mention of babies. Her mouth started moving, trying to say something. I bent closer, trying to encourage her.

“My babies,” she said, her voice low and harsh. “They died.”

I knelt down next to her wheelchair. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry.”

“Dr. Jacobs was so good to me. We drank tea.”

“I’m sure he was.” I wracked my brain trying to think of what I could ask her. “Mrs. Brown, do you remember Eva Knoll? She took care of your babies. Do you remember?”

Her eyes teared up upon hearing Eva’s name. “The judge sent her away. He said she was a bad woman. She just flew away. Like a bird.” A pale, age-spotted hand grabbed mine, pinning it to the cold handle of the wheelchair. “She wasn’t bad.” She squeezed my hand, then let go and crooked her finger at me to come closer. I bent toward her.

“Rouge,” she whispered, her head nodding. “The men love it. They don’t even know we have it on.”

Great, more grooming tips. I tried to lead her back to the subject of Eva Knoll, maybe find out her whereabouts. “Where did Eva Knoll go?” Before she had a chance to answer, we were interrupted by a sharp voice.

“Excuse me, who are you?”

I stood up and faced the stern-faced woman dressed in a nurse’s uniform. Unlike the rest of the employees of Oak Terrace, she wasn’t wearing a name tag, so I assumed she was one of the private nurses hired by the family.

“I was just saying hello to Mrs. Brown. We met the other day at the wine tasting in Eola Beach.”

The woman peered at me suspiciously and said, “She’s not up to visitors today.” She’d obviously been warned that people might come by and quiz her charge. She fiddled with the knitted throw in Mrs. Brown’s lap, then pushed her out of the room without another word to me.

I stood there for a moment, contemplating what Rose Brown had just told me. Her husband had sent Eva Knoll away. Why? Had she been involved with the death of the babies? If so, why hadn’t he turned her over to the authorities? I tried to sort out the things I’d learned. I had to find Eva Knoll, if she was still alive, and talk to her. But how? Then an idea formed.

Before going to the Sheriff’s Department to tell the detective what I’d learned, I stopped by my friend Amanda Landry’s law office to beg the use of her very capable investigator, Leilani, to locate Eva Knoll.

Amanda’s office was above the Ross store downtown. It was located up a set of narrow, steep marble stairs. Inside the small reception room, Muddy Waters played gut-aching blues from a small stereo hidden behind a bushy green fern. Though I’d known Amanda for only a short time and we definitely rooted for different college teams—she was a die-hard’Bama fan—we’d become good friends. A faithful, dyed-in-the-wool Crimson Tide Alabaman, she’d followed her husband to San Francisco, and when that didn’t work out, decided she loved the wild and woolly west enough to make it home. She’d worked for years as a prosecutor for both San Francisco and San Celina, but had sometime back started her own practice with an inheritance she’d acquired from her father, a rich Birmingham judge who wasn’t famous for his honesty, integrity, or marital faithfulness.

Luckily Amanda inherited her late blues-singing mother’s honesty as well as her weakness for down-and-out musicians.

“He’s the best I ever had,” she told me as I sat in her office, decorated in deep crimson and dark blue. Leilani was in her adjoining office using her numerous contacts and CD-ROM programs to get a lead on Eva Knoll. “I’m in heaven. I’ll never give him up. Never.” Her antique oak chair creaked when she leaned back. With the tip of a yellow school pencil, she scratched a spot in her thick head of auburn hair.

“We’ll see,” I said, having heard this song and dance before.

“I’m serious,” she said, giving me her Mississippi-wide smile. The same gorgeous smile that won her almost as many cases as her spur-sharp intelligence. “He’s perfect. Doesn’t miss a thing. I go to bed happy every night.”

“He’s a musician. You know how reliable they are.”

“He calls me Miss Mandy,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“And you let him live? He must be good.”

She sat forward in her seat and pointed the yellow pencil at me. “I’m telling you, cowgirl, my house has never been cleaner. Did you know that place on your stove, where those little round things are?”

“You mean the burners?” Cooking was not one of Amanda’s many talents.

“Did you know the thing they sit on, that whole top of the stove, lifts up? You should see what was under there. Disgusting! But, bless his blues-lovin’ heart, he’s thorough. He cleans
everywhere
,” she said, heaving a big sigh. “He’s not cheap, but, heavens to Dixie, he’s worth it.”

“Just don’t get romantically involved with him,” I warned, “or you’ll be out a great housecleaner.”

“Never,” she declared. “Boyfriends come and go, but a good housecleaner,
that’s
hard to find.”

Within the hour, Leilani found the information I was seeking.

“She’s still alive,” Leilani said, her brown, fashion-model face as sober as a prison guard’s. “Or at least someone who is signing her name and collecting her Social Security checks is.”

“How do you find out things like that, Leilani?” I asked. “I mean, isn’t it illegal or something? Privacy laws and stuff?”

“Never ask Leilani
how
,” Amanda said, nodding thanks at her investigator. “Just act like Elvis and say thankyouverymuch.”

“Thank you very much,” I said.

“No problem,” Leilani replied, her facial muscles not moving a bit. She turned and left the room, shutting the door behind her.

“Does she ever smile?” I asked Amanda. It was hard to imagine the two of them working together, considering how much Amanda liked to laugh.

“I think she cracked a small one when I gave her a Christmas bonus last year. Hey, who needs smiles when you can work the miracles she does. The DA’s office still hasn’t forgiven me for stealing her.”

We both glanced at the address Leilani had found.

“A post office box in Mariposa Valley,” I said. “That’s out in the Carrizo Plains. I haven’t been there in years.” The Carrizo Plains was in the far eastern part of San Celina County. Except for a few desert dwellers and sporadic groups of bird-watchers and hikers, the barren Carrizo Plains was pretty much left to its own counsel. Back in the fifties, there was a small flurry of interest by some Los Angeles developers who claimed it would be the next Palm Springs. Some streets were built and lots sold. There was even a motel and gas station constructed for the benefit of prospective buyers. But some kind of complication with water rights doomed the project, and all that was left were some windswept streets, rusty gas pumps, and the shell of the fifties-style motel called the Mariposa Valley Inn.

“I had to interview a witness out there once when I worked as a prosecutor,” Amanda said. “The only way to find anyone is to ask at the fire station. It’s about a half mile past the old motel.”

I folded the piece of paper and slipped it in my back pocket. “I’ll give it to Detective Hudson and let him take care of it.”

“Hey, why are you doin’ his work for him, might I ask?” I smiled. “Just to show him I can. He’s an arrogant Texan.”

“Oh, my, a Texan. I dated an attorney from Fort Worth once. Emphasis on the word once. By all means, use all my resources to put him in his place.”

“Thanks, Amanda. Again, I owe you one.”

“Who’s countin’?”

I used my cell phone to call Detective Hudson. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes tops.”

“It’s almost seven o’clock,” he said. “Where have you been? Your class was over at four-thirty, and it’s only a ten-minute drive.”