The Happy Birthday Murder (22 page)

She shook her head. “I was so stupid. I hadn't smoked grass for years. Larry never knew I had smoked it. He didn't know anything about my life before we met. I was with some friends and one of them handed me a joint. I lit up when I was driving. It had more of an effect on me than I remembered. My car probably wandered into the other lane. Of course I shouldn't have been smoking. Of course I shouldn't have tossed it out the window—I saw him in the
rearview mirror, picking it up as I pulled away—but I wasn't thinking straight. None of this would have happened if I hadn't been smoking. Larry died because of it.”

“And another man,” I said.

“Yes.” Her voice was very low.

“What did you tell your husband when you got home that night?”

“Just that there'd been an accident, that I'd panicked, and that I was afraid. Later, when the calls began, I told him I'd been smoking. He protected me because he loved me. But on the night of the party, I didn't know where he went until he didn't come home. Then I began to suspect he'd been called by the blackmailer, who we both thought was out of our lives. But I had no idea where he was. And of course, I didn't know there was someone else involved.”

I sat quietly. She had lived two separate lives, and now she was about to start a third. There would be lawyers and appearances in court, stories that were true or partly true or completely false. In the end, perhaps there would be a plea bargain, a balance of her old life against her new one, what she had once been weighed against the person she had become. I hoped she would stay out of prison, but I wasn't sure that could be arranged.

Suddenly she looked at me with a smile. “You see why I refused to give you the names of my friends in Connecticut. I knew they weren't involved and I didn't want to get them involved.”

I nodded. It seemed so long ago, I had almost forgotten.

“Did he tell you he blackmailed me?” she asked. “The man in jail in Florida?”

“Not yet. We just got the cigarette from him and his description of what happened that night. He doesn't know we know about the blackmail and the murder of your husband. But we've tied the gun to him.”

“Larry must have thought he could somehow get himself out of his clutches if they came to the house. Maybe he said he had money in the fishing box.”

“That's where you found the gun?”

“Yes. But I guess the killer got suspicious. I wish I'd gotten up when I heard the bang. I wish—”

“Will you turn yourself in, Laura?”

“To the police?”

“You really have to.”

“I'll end up in jail.”

I didn't know what to say. Suddenly I heard the sound of running feet and someone shouted, “Police! Don't move.”

“Oh, no,” Laura said.

Three uniformed members of the Oakwood Police Department appeared, all of them holding weapons.

“It's OK, Chris!” I heard Jack call from the path.

I turned toward him and called back, “Where's Eddie?”

“In the car. He's fine.”

The police officers were busy handcuffing Laura and reading her her rights as I walked back to where Jack was.

“Chris!” she called.

I took a few steps in her direction.

“Make him pay for killing Larry.”

“I will,” I promised.

“I guess I can call my mother now,” she said, tears forming in her eyes. “She'll see her grandchildren for the first time, and her great-grandchildren.”

I turned away. I didn't want to see her taken to the car.

I gave a long statement to the Oakwood Police that afternoon while my husband and son made dinner. Larry Filmore had been murdered in Oakwood and they were very interested in what I had learned about his death and the suspect I had uncovered. They didn't really know anything about Darby Maxwell's death, but they got in touch with the police in Connecticut and arranged for someone to come down the next day and take another statement from me. They called the prison in Florida and began to make arrangements for Paul Norman to be brought to New York State for questioning in the two deaths and in the automobile accident as well. It was a complicated business and I had to keep straightening out the chronology and identifying the players. I gave them chapter and verse on the gun that had killed Filmore, going back to the winter of 1969, when one of the cops talking to me had not yet been born.

It was exhausting and I knew I would think of more details when I got home, but I wanted to give them as much as I could today to spare myself another similar ordeal.

When it was over, I asked about Laura.

“She's been taken to the FBI office in White Plains,” one of the cops said. “She asked for a lawyer and I think he was waiting for her when she got there.”

“I'd like to bring her some things, a toothbrush and some clothes,” I said.

He told me whom to call in White Plains. Then I drove home.

Jack and Eddie were having a good time in the kitchen. Something in the oven smelled very good.

“You look like hell,” Jack said.

“This was one tough day.”

“Go take it easy. We've got everything under control.”

It was what I wanted to hear.

I spent a lot of time that night thinking about something I was sure Laura—or Luann—had not thought about until it was too late, consequences. I thought of pebbles thrown into ponds and the ripples they made. I thought of children touching fire, not understanding what would happen to their skin. And I thought of young people stealing and killing for a cause they considered worthy.

How many of them, I wondered, had done what Laura did, simply become someone else and put the past behind them? And how many others had paid a price? I had been born at a different time and not lived through the turmoil of the sixties and seventies at an age when I could have been drawn into the kind of life Laura had experienced. At what age did a person need to accept responsibility for his actions? At what age did he need to think about the consequences of what he did? Had Laura ever accepted such responsibility or thought about those consequences? After all, at an age when she was a wife and mother, and had been for many years, she had driven while smoking an illegal substance and had left the scene of an accident she may have caused.

And still, as she had said this afternoon, she had spent much of her life making restitution. My questions had no
certain answers, and that's probably why they kept me awake so long.

The next day I talked to the Connecticut police in my own living room. The detective who came down was old enough that he remembered Darby well, the search parties, the community gathering together to help. I told him about the Gallaghers and their cousin, Paul Norman. I told him about the trip Frannie and I had made to Florida and what we had turned up. I gave him names and numbers and suggestions. When he left, I called Betty Linton and went over a lot of it again. To say she was shocked at Laura Filmore's part in all of it was an understatement.

Later in the day, Jack called. He had heard from the hospital.

“What hospital?” I asked, alarmed.

“About the chocolate.”

“Oh,” I said with relief, “that hospital.”

“They said there was a substance at the center—I don't have my notes right here—that induced vomiting in the kids who ate it. The police are questioning Ryan's brother to see who gave him the candies.”

“He's just a boy,” I said. “I hope they won't charge him with anything.”

“They just want the source, if they can nail it down. The hospital was very grateful that we turned up the candy.”

So was I.

Laura Filmore posted a huge bond, over a million dollars, and was released from prison in her own recognizance. She hired a name-brand lawyer who is putting together a defense for her trial, which is scheduled for next year. The town turned out to support her, and I was with them all the way. Her elderly mother came to visit, renewing their once close relationship. It was the first time
they had seen each other in over thirty years. I was glad something really good came out of Laura's problems.

Some time later, I heard from Frannie Gallagher. Paul had been flown to New York, where he was questioned by detectives from Oakwood and Connecticut. Confronted with evidence about the gun, the fire at the Gallaghers', and assorted other things, he made a deal that included a confession to having harbored Darby Maxwell in the guest house for several days and not turning him over to the police. He refused to admit he had had a hand in Darby's death.

He also refused to admit he had shot Larry Filmore. Filmore had driven them to Oakwood, he said, promising Norman money that was locked in a box in the garage. But they had gotten in an argument about who would go for the box and Filmore had taken the gun from him and shot himself, after which Norman fled. That's about as believable as some of my son's fantasies. If Larry Filmore had a gun in his hand and Paul Norman was nearby, who would be the most likely target?

When they talk about tangled webs, I think they probably mean situations like that.

The detective from Oakwood who did the questioning was my old friend Detective Joe Fox. We have had our problems in the past, but I have grown to like him very much and to trust his instincts. He called one day and asked if he could come over to talk to me about the case. I invited him for the evening and got a nice coffee cake to serve when he came.

He arrived with flowers, not for the first time, and we all made ourselves comfortable in the family room. Jack had gotten a really good fire going and Eddie was asleep upstairs. It was already December, and a light coating of snow covered all the lawns on the block.

“You get all the good ones, Mrs. Brooks,” Joe said, sipping his coffee. He never calls me Chris.

“This one came out of a carton in the basement, some letters and cards my aunt saved. We had a little water down there from an open window and I decided to go through the papers and see what was worth saving.”

“But surely your aunt didn't have knowledge of a homicide.”

“She didn't, and I didn't, either. I just wanted to meet the people who had written to my aunt. It was the sneakers that made me realize something was amiss.”

“The sneakers, right. That was in your statement. I asked Paul Norman about them. From the look on his face, I could tell he didn't know what I was talking about. You want to tell me about it?”

I went through it for the last time, or so I hoped, Larry Filmore's brilliant move to alert the world that something was amiss.

“So why wasn't the world alerted?”

I spelled it out for him.

“Ah.”

“And it was only by chance that the two surviving women mentioned the sneakers to me. If they hadn't, none of this would have happened.”

“Misplaced sneakers,” the detective said thoughtfully. “I'll keep that in mind next time I'm held hostage.”

“I hope there's no next time,” I said.

“Thank you, dear lady. So do I.”

It was winter when an envelope with my name and address typed on the front arrived. The return address was a mysterious FG and a street that looked familiar but didn't quite register. I slit it open and pulled out a couple of sheets of paper obviously copied on a machine. A small note-sized paper fluttered to the floor. I picked it up, smiling at the bright flowers along the top.

The note read:

Dear Chris,

I thought you would want to see this. I got it a couple of weeks ago and didn't know whether I should send it along but decided I should. I hope this answers all your questions.

Love,

Frannie

Frannie Gallagher, I thought. I made myself comfortable and began to read.

Dear Frannie,

Peabody says he'll mail this to you without looking at what it says. I want to come clean, at least to you. I owe you that much. It's always bothered me that I burned down the guest house and didn't tell you. I should of
paid you, but I was short on cash and after awhile I just forgot. You know me.

I knew you and Dave were going away that time for a couple of weeks ten or eleven years ago, whenever it was, and I had something doing in New York and when I got it done, I figured I'd rest up in Connecticut. I always like it there. So I drove up and made myself at home. All I wanted was a couple of days to rest up and sleep and maybe walk in the woods.

One night there was this knock on the door. When I looked outside, a guy was standing there. I asked him what he wanted and he said he was lost. He came inside and I got the feeling he was a retard or something. He knew his mother's phone number and asked if I'd call her and I probably would of, but there was no phone. I told him I'd have to go into town and find a phone, but it would have to wait till tomorrow.

I gave him one of those frozen dinners I'd picked up at the store and let him sleep in the little bedroom. His name was Darby, which I thought was a crazy name. I don't remember if he gave me his last name.

Anyways, I was pretty short of cash around that time—I know you've heard that before, so don't laugh—and I thought maybe I could get his mother to pay me a little something to give him back. So the next day I went into town and got a paper to see if there was a story about a missing person.

It was on the front page of the local newspaper, how he walked away from his mother and got lost in the woods. They even had a search party out looking for him. I decided to wait another day before I called. I didn't want to sound anxious. I had locked the guy in the bedroom and told him not to make any noise.

So I went back to town the next day and sure enough, there were flyers on all the poles in town. So I called his
mother and asked some questions and whether there was a reward. She kind of waffled, but the bottom line was no. I couldn't believe it.

I was pissed, I can tell you. I had thought maybe ten thousand, but I would've taken a thou. I mean, this was her son, for God's sake. So I called someone I knew who had some money.

You remember that car accident I was in when a friend of mine got hurt real bad? Well, the gal who hit my car was married to a guy with lots of money. You already know what she was smoking that night. So I called this guy and told him I needed to see him and I needed some money or someone would die. I also reminded him I had a little something on his wife that I could take to the police. He said he didn't have time for me; I should call back the next day. I think he was at a party or something. He really ticked me off. And this Darby guy was a pain that night, crying and everything, and I called this woman's husband again and put it to him that he better get his ass up here or the butt his wife was smoking the night of the accident would be in a police station and did he know what she would look like after a few years in Girls Town. And I said there would be a dead body in the morning besides. So he came.

The shit only had a couple hundred dollars on him and he didn't want to deal unless I gave him the evidence and the retard was driving me crazy. Finally, the guy said he had money at home and we drove to this town in New York State. What a house. He must've been worth millions. He drove into his garage and gave me a song and dance about having a lot of money in some box in the garage. I knew he was lying. I knew the minute he got out of that car an alarm would go off and I'd be in jail. I was scared to death, Frannie. I didn't know what to do and he was like trying to get my gun
away from me. (I had this old gun.) So I had to, well, anyway, he got shot and I fixed it up to look like he shot himself. You know, like a suicide. Then I got the hell out of there.

I had a hell of a time getting back to Connecticut, I can tell you. I was lucky to catch a ride after I got off the train, but I had him drop me a mile from the house. I took Darby into the woods and pointed him in some direction and told him to keep walking and he'd find his mother. Then I went back and tried to clean up the guest house so you wouldn't know I'd been there with two other people. The place was a mess and I had to get back to Florida and I took the easy way out. I took my stuff out and started a fire. When it was going good, I drove into town and called the fire number.

That's the story, Frannie. I'm sorry about everything. I don't know what happened to that Darby guy. Maybe he found another house; maybe he didn't. I just knew I had to get out of there before he started talking to anyone.

Anyway, I owe you. I always have.

Paul