The Christening Day Murder (2 page)

What I was really thinking about was the possibility of having company. I was pretty sure Maddie wouldn’t mind, and the thought of spending a weekend, even a single night, in a hotel with Jack was raising more than my blood pressure.

Jack Brooks is a sergeant with the New York City Police Department. We met when I was a few weeks out of St. Stephen’s and looking into a forty-year-old murder I had gotten hooked into investigating. The last thing I wanted at that point in my life was a relationship with a man. I had just made the most important decision of my life, leaving the convent where I had spent half of that life, and I wanted time to become part of my new community before thinking about emotional attachments. Happily, I turned out not to be very good at planning, and our friendship blossomed into a love affair. Having lived without sex for thirty years, I am still somewhat amazed that I can be reduced to desperation if we don’t see each other for more than a few days. But we had never spent a night anywhere but in my house or his apartment, and I had fantasies about making love in a hotel.

I put the map back in the box and went downstairs to read
the paper and watch something on TV. It was one of Jack’s nights at law school, so I couldn’t call till after ten, when he would get home so tired that it was often hard for him to make conversation.

I waited till the top news had been reported and then dialed his number. He answered on the second ring—he lives in a tiny apartment.

“It’s me,” I said. “You sound beat.”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Got an invitation I want to share with you. A weekend in the middle of New York State and a christening on Sunday morning.”

“The weekend sounds great. When is it?”

“Two weeks from Sunday.”

I heard a page turn in the little book he keeps in his pocket. Then I heard the hiss of an obscenity. “I’ve got a big test the week after, Chris. I already put in for a day off so I can study. I don’t see how I can do it.” He sounded down, and I felt the sting of my own disappointment.

“Don’t worry it,” I said. “There’ll be lots of other times.”

“Will you mind going without me?”

“Sure I’ll mind. But I’ll go anyway, and miss you.”

“You got anything on for tomorrow night?”

“Nothing.”

“No town meetings or faculty get-togethers or plea bargains with your
pro bono
friend?”

I laughed. “My calendar is clear.”

“Why don’t you come on in and we’ll have dinner and stay warm together?”

“I’ll be there.”

“It feels like weeks since I saw you.”

It was four days. “Me, too.”

“I’ll be home by six-thirty.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

   Among the things I do in my life are teaching, which I’ve done for years, and some work for a lawyer named Arnold
Gold, who has become a friend of mine. Arnold is the quintessential champion of the underdog and one of the best lawyers around. He got me started on some volunteer work some time ago and then began to worry about how I was supporting myself. I told him I had little to worry about. The house I live in is paid for. My aunt left me some money, which yields interest, and when I left St. Stephen’s, the remainder of my dowry was returned to me, minus expenses like my car. Added to my inheritance, it seemed pretty substantial to me, although I guess to most people it might not. But Arnold was worried about my future. Did I have medical insurance? How about social security? What if I was hit with a catastrophic illness? When I had no satisfactory answers for his questions, he hired me to do some part-time work, get in on his profit-sharing plan, pay my social security, and get myself insured.

Mostly I take things home with me and type them up, but I’ve also done some proofreading and editing, and on occasion even running to the post office or delivering something that should have been done yesterday. On the day after the call from Maddie, I had a stack of work that I intended to return to Arnold’s office. Usually I take the train in from my little town of Oakwood on the north shore of the Long Island Sound, but since I was going to see Jack, I drove in, parked near his apartment in Brooklyn Heights, and took the subway back to Manhattan. Arnold was in court, but there was work for me, and I spent a few hours at the computer before taking the subway back to Brooklyn.

Jack’s apartment is two rooms, with a tiny kitchen on one wall of the living room. It has everything in miniature that the ideal kitchen would have, including a microwave oven and a dishwasher. The place is always spotlessly clean, although I’m sure he cooks there and I know he lives there. When I left St. Stephen’s, I relaxed a little in a lot of ways. If papers pile up or clothes go unironed, I don’t worry much about it.

I took a quick shower and washed off the grime of New
York. Then I put on jeans and a sweatshirt. If we were going out for dinner, I could change. But it felt good to relax in something casual, and while I waited, I made a cup of tea and read a book I’d brought along. I heard the key in the lock before I’d finished the cup.

Jack is part of the Detective Division, and he usually wears a tweedy jacket to work. One thing he never looks is formal. His hair is curly and does its own thing. His pockets are stuffed with the usual things that men carry, plus his detective’s notebook and some folded sheets of paper on which he doodles, thinks, and takes notes. And over on his left side, he wears a gun.

The smile that I always wait for broke as soon as he saw me. Although the first thing he does when he comes in is take off the gun and put it away, we got to each other before he had a chance, and when we wrapped our arms around each other, I could feel it against my right side. Before he’d come in, I’d had a couple of hunger pangs, but once our lips touched, once his hands caressed my back under the sweatshirt, I forgot all about food.

A long time afterward, we found the front door ajar. It made me feel good. I like a man who can forget his work sometimes.

   Two weeks later I got in my car and left for Studsburg.

Baptism is unique among the seven sacraments. It is the only one that can be performed by a layman. It’s not hard to
understand why. If an unbaptized baby dies, its soul doesn’t go to heaven. So if you give birth far from a Catholic community, you can perform the rite without a priest. As children we were taught how to do it.

A baptism can be performed virtually anywhere—a church, a home, an apartment. Although the church in Studsburg had not been used for decades, it was still an appropriate place for a baptism as long as it was clean and had not been desecrated. I assumed the family would take care of the former before Sunday morning.

As I drove along the southern tier of New York State, I remembered baptisms I had attended. Some were for the children of old school friends like Maddie, others for the children of former students of mine at St. Stephen’s who had, for one reason or another, decided to bring their babies back to the convent for this all-important occasion. Needless to say, every baptism is a pleasure, and in this case, I was more than a little excited at the prospect of seeing a town and a church that had emerged from the deep after thirty years. To my literary soul it suggested the rebirth of the church, its symbolic baptism in the lake.

Since I normally awaken quite early, a relic of fifteen years of early morning prayers, it wasn’t hard to get myself out and on the road that Saturday morning. I wanted some time to look around the town in the afternoon before the festivities got under way. Maddie had invited me to dinner at a cousin’s house, so all I would have was a few hours between arriving and getting ready.

I checked into the motel and paid cash in advance for my stay. With my life-style, it’ll be a long time before I qualify for a credit card. I had a strange feeling entering my room. In all my thirty years, I had never spent a night alone in a hotel. True, I had traveled, but always with another woman. On those occasions we had immediately covered the bedroom and bathroom mirrors to prevent ourselves from seeing our reflections. Today I was free of those restrictions but still near enough that I rarely lingered at a mirror.

I put my bag on the luggage rack and unpacked what needed to be hung up. As I organized the hangers, I had a surprising sense of independence. Much as I had wanted Jack to join me, something in me was glad I had come alone.

The young man at the desk gave me easy directions to Studsburg. “Just take a right out of the parking lot and go up to the first crossroad. A left for two miles, then a right at Millburg Road. I saw this morning that someone had put up a sign saying Studsburg. I think they’re having some celebration at the church there tomorrow.”

“A baptism,” I said. “My friend’s son.”

“Well, that should be something to remember. That town was underwater when I was born, and I’ve been watching it surface for almost a year now. You going over to have a look?”

“I thought I’d like to see it before tomorrow. We’ll probably all be too busy then.”

“Well, if it’s anything like last weekend, you may find a few cars parked near the edge of the town. They won’t let you drive right into it, but you can get pretty close. The roads are pretty much gone, and the ground at the bottom is still soft. But you won’t have any trouble walking around. Just don’t wear high-heeled shoes.”

I smiled. “I thought of that.” I looked down at my sturdy sneakers. “Thank you. If anyone calls for me, tell them I’ll be back by five.”

“Will do. Have a nice afternoon.”

The new sign that said
STUDSBURG I MI
. included a happy face, probably Maddie’s doing. I turned onto the “other road” and bumped my way past a farmhouse and some cows. Beyond that, the land had an unused look and was set off from the farm by a forbidding chain-link fence. Farther along was an official-looking building with the word
WATERWORKS
on the sign out in front. I slowed and started to descend the immense, bowl-shaped depression that had been a reservoir. Clustered at and near the bottom were the remains of the
town. A few cars were parked at what seemed to be the end of the unpaved road.

An officious-looking sign proclaimed:
STUDSBURG. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
. I did.

I don’t know what I expected, but what I saw along the easy slope down was a path already worn, and beyond it the remnants of the old town, mostly concrete foundations and, amazingly, tree stumps. If the slope had been treed, which it probably once was, it would have provided a sense of compact safety to the inhabitants. Even now there were weeds popping up along the slope, and here and there what looked like seedlings. I sometimes think in the long run vegetation will out, especially the lowest forms.

But what dominated the scene in front of me was the hollow-eyed church with its soaring steeple. I tramped through alternately dry and muddy paths, stepping occasionally on rectangles of sidewalks and chunks of streets, till I reached it. It was a classic Gothic design, shorn of windows and doors, a fairly large church for so small a community. Perhaps at one time it had drawn worshipers from nearby towns. Or more likely, perhaps the town had once known better days and a larger population.

I walked through the doorless doorway, wondering what had become of the massive doors that had once filled the emptiness. Inside, the sanctuary was stripped of anything movable, leaving a large, empty space that reminded me of descriptions of the cathedral of Chartres where once the poor camped out on a sloped floor that could easily be washed down.

Inside St. Mary Immaculate a few tourists were looking around, and several young people were sweeping away rotting debris.

“Come on in,” one of them called cheerfully to me. “We’re just cleaning up for tomorrow.”

“What’s happening tomorrow?” a woman visitor asked.

“Somebody’s having a baptism.”

“Here?” the woman said with disbelief.

“Yes, ma’am. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Can we come and see it?”

“Don’t know why not.”

I walked along the already-cleaned side of the church. There were no confessionals, but that wasn’t surprising as they’re often built of wood and would have been removed along with the pews. But the interior wall looked as sturdy as any I’d ever seen. Whatever material was holding the stones together looked hardly affected by three decades of water, although scattered on the walls were patches of white and green stuff that looked uncomfortably like mold.

Along the side of the sanctuary was a small room that I recognized as the sacristy, where the priest kept his vestments. It had only one window and it smelled dank and moldy. I took my trusty flashlight out of my bag, a relic of a recent time when I had needed it in an old apartment house in New York, and flashed it around the bare room. A doorway at the other end led to another room that may also have been used for storage. This one was larger and also had a second door, one that would give access to the other side of the church, where they were now cleaning up. I retraced my steps so as not to get in anyone’s way and went back to the sanctuary the way I had come.

Then I went back outside, deciding to return after the baptism and wander some more. The tourists were taking pictures of the church and of the scenery, although there wasn’t much to look at from an esthetic point of view. I wandered away from them off to my right, leaving church and people behind. Some distance away, an elderly couple stood together, cameraless, looking, if not bewildered, then at least full of wonder.

I raised my hand in a wave as I neared them and said, “Hi.”

“Afternoon,” the man said. He was wearing overalls and a plaid shirt under his jacket. “Drive up to see the town?”

“I came for a christening. My friend’s son is being baptized tomorrow in St. Mary Immaculate.”

He smiled and offered his hand. “You must be a friend of the Stiflers then. I’m Henry Degenkamp. This is my wife, Ellie.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Chris Bennett.”

“That’s the Stiflers’ place right down the street there. Third house from ours.” He pointed away from me down an imaginary road toward a nonexistent house. “Stiflers and Degenkamps were neighbors for generations. Kinda thought it would go on forever, but the government had other ideas.”