The Christening Day Murder (11 page)

A phone book in a coffee shop confirmed the address I had for Eric Degenkamp, and a helpful cashier gave me directions to the house. The streets in Cayuga Heights were winding and beautiful, the houses brick and stone, the lawns and trees showpieces. I parked at the curb in front of the Degenkamp house and walked up a slate path to the front door.

A woman in her fifties answered my ring. “Hi,” she said as though we knew each other.

I introduced myself and said I was looking for Henry or Ellie Degenkamp.

“They’re both home. Come along. Better keep your coat on. I think they’re on the back porch, and it isn’t heated.”

They were on the back porch, and the sun was so strong, it made artificial heat unnecessary.

Henry saw me come out and said, “It’s the young lady from the Stifler baptism.”

The younger Mrs. Degenkamp excused herself after we’d all said hello, and I got down to business. The Degenkamps knew about the body in St. Mary Immaculate and were eager to talk about it. They seemed a little put off when my first question was whether they had received a copy of the last issue of the
Studsburg Herald
.

“Well, I suppose we did,” Henry said, his brow furrowing. “We got it every Tuesday and Friday.”

“This one had pictures of the picnic and the fireworks and a whole section on the history of the town.”

Henry smiled agreeably. “If you say so, then I guess we got it. You didn’t come all this way to see it, did you?”

“No, I’ve already seen it.”

“You have?” Ellie said.

“Yes. It’s a pretty fat issue. You’re both in it, you know.”

“Then what’s the problem?” Henry said.

“It seems that J.J. Eberling gave it to some people and not to others.”

Henry shook his thinly haired old head. “It’s too long ago for me to remember a newspaper.”

I switched to my other area of interest. “Do you remember any young women in their twenties who worked in Studsburg and didn’t live there? Maybe someone who was new to the area?”

They looked at each other as though eye contact would help them remember. “I can’t think of a soul,” Ellie said.

“Maybe a teller at the bank,” I prompted. “Maybe someone who worked in the grocery. Could there have been a secretary in the administration building?”

Ellie laughed out loud. “You make Studsburg sound like New York City. There wasn’t any administration building. Fred Larkin worked out of his basement, and I’m sure his wife did his typing, all three sheets of it every year. We were only a town of five hundred before the decision came down, and after that, we were a little less every week. We had volunteers for the fire department, and if we needed a policeman, we’d get one from the next town or the state police, or maybe the sheriff’s office would send someone over. We just didn’t need outsiders.”

“You think that girl they found worked in the bank or the store?” Henry asked.

“I don’t know where she worked. I don’t know if she worked. All I know is she had something to do with Studsburg, and someone killed her. Can you think of anyone who could help me?”

“It can’t have been anyone we knew,” Henry said. “And if we didn’t know her, nobody else would know her. You couldn’t walk down the street that last year without bumping into the whole population. There just weren’t that many people left at the end.”

“You look unhappy,” Ellie said to me.

“I am. I keep thinking it’s someone everyone knows and isn’t aware of, someone …”I looked at my watch. It was nearly noon, and I didn’t want to be invited for lunch. “I’m going to drop in on Mayor Larkin. Maybe he’ll remember.”

“I don’t think Fred’ll help you any more ’n us,” Ellie said.

I got up and started to say good-bye when something occurred to me. “Did you know J.J. Eberling?” I asked. “I mean more than just to recognize.”

“Wasn’t a friend,” Henry said, “but we knew him. He published that paper you were talking about.”

“I wonder where he had it printed after they closed down his press.”

“No idea,” Ellie said.

“Oh, there was a big printer in the next town, Steuben Printers or something like that,” Henry said.

“I don’t think Steuben did it, Henry.”

“Well, thanks anyway.” I shook their hands and left them on the porch.

   When you leave the New York metropolitan area, all the radio stations that you’re used to gradually fade out until they’re inaudible. Except for the fact that it’s hard to find news, it isn’t much of a loss. By chance I tuned in to a central New York station that played fifties music and found myself getting lost in sentimental ballads. As I picked my way through unfamiliar roads, hoping I was traveling in more or less the right general direction, I sensed the suitability of the old music. I was going back in time again to when all the gray heads had color and all the old bodies had vigor and someone was angry enough to kill a young woman.

Carol Stifler’s list indicated that Fred Larkin had moved a couple of times since the end of Studsburg, but he had stayed in western and central New York State. Now he lived on a country road that hadn’t been paved for a while in a brick house with an old red barn behind it. I pulled into the long driveway and got out of the car.

As I approached the front door, it opened and a man with a beautiful head of gray hair smiled at me.

“Afternoon,” he called.

“Mr. Larkin?”

“The one and only.”

“Hi,” I said, offering my hand. “I’m Christine Bennett.”

“You must be the young lady who’s trying to figure out that awful murder.”

“How did you know?”

“Sheriff’s office came and asked some questions. They mentioned your name.”

We walked inside and he took my coat.

“If they’ve already been here, I guess there’s nothing new you can tell me.”

“Probably not, but I’ll do my best. Can I get you a glass of something?”

“No, thanks.”

An attractive woman with salt-and-pepper gray hair and an enviable figure came in the room.

“My wife,” Larkin said.

I stood and shook hands with her. “Glad to meet you, Mrs. Larkin.”

“I’ll just let you two talk,” she said. “Call if you want anything, Fred.”

The mayor smiled after her affectionately. “ Well, let’s hear it.”

“Do you remember Joanne Beadles?” I asked, pretty certain the sheriff hadn’t asked that question.

The name didn’t seem to faze him. “I can tell you right off there wasn’t a Beadles living in Studsburg, not as long as I lived there. And I lived there forty-four years.”

“Joanne worked for J.J. Eberling.”

“Ah, J.J.” Larkin smiled. “Great man, J.J. He’s gone now, you know.”

“I heard.”

“And this Joanne worked in the newspaper office?”

“She was the Eberlings’ housekeeper. She worked in their home.”

“Those girls came and went,” he said. “I wouldn’t have any way of keeping track of them. They didn’t go to our school or our church or buy in our stores. I’m afraid I couldn’t help you.”

“But you knew J.J.,” I said.

“Oh, sure. If you lived in Studsburg, you couldn’t help knowing him. He was one of our most distinguished citizens. Did a lot for the town. Fine gentleman.” He took a pipe off the end table beside him and started filling it slowly from a worn leather pouch.

“Mr. Larkin, I think the person who was buried in the church was someone who didn’t live in Studsburg but had
some connection to the town or to someone who lived in the town.”

“That’s why you asked about Joanne.”

“Yes.”

“Well, as I said—” he began to puff on the pipe as he held a lighted match over the bowl “—there were any number of girls and women who held day jobs. I don’t have any idea how you could find their names today.”

The aroma of the tobacco reached me as he finished speaking. “That’s nice,” I said.

“Well, Evvie doesn’t like it very much. But since she’s not in the room …”He raised his eyebrows elfishly.

“What about other people who worked in Studsburg? I understand there was a Mrs. Castro in the rectory.”

“Yes, there was, and Mrs. Castro was sixty if she was a day.”

I hadn’t expected to hear she was otherwise, but I wanted him to know I knew a few things about the town. “What about the bank or the grocery store?”

“Emily Vandermark was about the only woman I know who worked in the bank, and they shut that down pretty fest when people started moving out. Poor Emily was out of a job, and she left town. She’d worked there a good twenty years.”

“And the grocery?”

“That was the original mom-and-pop establishment. Pete and Grace Gilhooley ran that, with their kids helping out as they got older. That was the post office, too, by the way. And pretty near the civic center, if you know what I mean.”

I could imagine. “Then you can’t think of any young woman who worked in Studsburg and lived somewhere else.”

“Not offhand.”

“Maybe someone who came from somewhere else,” I suggested. “Someone who was new in town that last year.”

“Why would anyone come to a town that was being put out of business?” he asked.

I had no answer. “Maybe one of the young men in town
had a girlfriend from out of town. She could have come to Studsburg just to see him.”

“And he killed her?”

“Perhaps.”

“Hard for me to think of boys and their girlfriends after so long a time.”

“Mr. Larkin, did you get the last copy of the
Studsburg Herald
from J.J. Eberling?”

“I’m sure I did.”

“The thick one, with all the pictures.”

“I must have,” he said. “I got the
Herald
every Tuesday and Friday of my life.”

“Do you still have it?”

He waved the pipe. “Somewhere,” he said. “I don’t think I could put my hands on it without a search.”

“Do you remember what time you left Studsburg that last day?”

“I was one of the last to go. That was my town, and I felt it my duty to stay till the end. I have to admit, it was a tearful parting.”

I was feeling pretty down myself at that point. If I could believe him and Mrs. Eberling, both he and J.J. had stayed till the end. Mrs. Eberling had spoken of her husband as the captain of a ship. In my mythology, ship captains stay till the last man is gone. “I thank you for your help, Mr. Larkin,” I said, getting up. “I guess it’s a blind alley. I just hate to think of a young woman being buried in potter’s field.”

“I’m sure that won’t happen. I’ll ask around and get some contributions to give her a decent burial.”

“That’s very nice of you. May I send you a check for the fund?”

He patted my shoulder. “Let’s wait till the sheriff finishes his investigation. Would you like to see a picture of Studsburg taken from the air?”

“Very much.”

He took me to a wood-paneled room with a fireplace. There were sports trophies on the mantel and family pictures
on the walls. Frederick Everett Larkin’s framed sheepskin hung among them.

“A friend of mine took it from a helicopter that last year. It’s as clear as they come. You can see almost every building in town.”

The photo was large and mounted over the fireplace. The church dominated the near left center, and I could make out Main Street and the famous bridge. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

He picked up a pointer and touched the photo. “That’s where I lived. And here’s J.J.’s house. Big, wasn’t it?”

“And handsome.”

“Here are all the stores on Main Street—the bank, the general store. Here’s the old coffee shop. They made the best pie you ever tasted, and a meat loaf that’d knock your socks off. Here’s the one and only gas station in town. That’s the playground right here. See the bleachers? J.J. bought ’em for us. We had some great ball games there. Here’s Simpson’s Farm, this big, open space. You ever taste fresh-picked corn?”

“Once or twice.”

“Nothing like it, nothing in the worid. Here’s the road that came through town, this little ribbon. What a beautiful place that town was. And here’s the school I went to and my kids went to, and there’s the little grove of pines where I asked my wife to marry me.”

“Were you married in St. Mary Immaculate?” I asked.

“You bet.”

“Thank you for showing it to me, Mr. Larkin. And for the guided tour.”

“My pleasure. The best years of my life were spent in that town. Let me walk you to your car.” The nostalgic trip through Studsburg had invigorated him. His voice was strong and he moved with youthful agility.

I stuck my head in the kitchen and said good-bye to Mrs. Larkin. Then I put my coat on and we walked outside.

“Nothing like it,” he said. “This is a pretty place we live in now and we have a nice life here, but that town was special.
I can’t tell you the grief when we heard it was going to be flooded. We fought it, of course, but the little people never win those battles.”

The wind was blowing now. “Were you at the baptism for the Stiflers’ baby on the Fourth of July?” I asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

I had known he was there, because Carol had pointed him out in pictures in her album. “Were you and your wife both from Studsburg?”

“Met her when I was in the eighth grade.”

My hand was on my car door. “The school,” I said. “Who were the teachers?”

“In my memory there were never a hundred kids in the whole school at one time. What we did was, we had teachers who took several classes. Mrs. McCormick must have taught there forty years. I had her, and my son had her.”

“Did she live in town?”

“No, I believe she drove in from somewhere every day.”

“And who were the others?”

“Mr. Dietrich was the other one. That last year the classes shrank down to almost nothing, but we had to keep him on.”

“And that was it?”

“That was it.” He held out his hand and we shook.

As I backed out of his drive, he stood watching me, and he waved as I reached the road.

In a little while I was on my way to the convent.

I was troubled enough by some of the things Fred Larkin had said to make a small detour and drop into the sheriff’s office. Deputy Drago was just putting on his hat to go out, and I reminded him who I was and we shook hands.