The Happy Birthday Murder (6 page)

“And your husband?”

“Exactly the same. Larry acted as though it had been a surprise. He hadn't known who was on the guest list, except for the obvious people, and he talked about how some old friends looked, what they were doing. He told me…” She faltered for the first time and I sat and waited. “He told me how much he loved me.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “But there was nothing of a farewell in what he said. He was looking forward. He said maybe we would return the favor and take a trip to Tokyo to visit our friends there. I think he was just as happy and excited as I was.” She looked away and I could imagine that she was remembering the last happy moments of their life together.

“I'm sorry this is so painful,” I said. “Perhaps—”

“No, we have to do this. Let's see. It must have been at least two-thirty when we went to bed, maybe even as late as three. I had no alarms set. We agreed to sleep in. We turned the lights off and that was it. The night of the happy birthday party was over.”

What she had told me sounded very ordinary, just what I would expect after a party like the one she had described.
It was the next step that I thought would be telling. “Do you think you can go on?” I asked.

She nodded. “I don't really know what time it was, but it wasn't light yet, so it might have been four or five and it couldn't have been much after six. The nights were getting longer, and I know it was dark. The phone rang. The sound worked itself into whatever I was dreaming, so I didn't react to the first ring, and obviously Larry didn't, either. But when I realized someone was calling in the middle of the night, I awoke in fear. Larry's mother was not young and she had come to the party. She had left early and gone home, but what if she had become ill? I heard Larry answer the phone, but he didn't say much, just syllables and grunts. When he hung up, he said something like ‘a problem at the plant.' He had to go.

“I remember saying, ‘Let someone else go, honey. You need your sleep.' But he was already out of bed and getting dressed. He said I should go to sleep and he would see me in the morning.”

“Did your husband own a gun, Laura?”

She took her time answering. “He did. It was licensed and all that, perfectly legal. He had owned it for many years, but as far as I know, he had never used it.”

“Do you know where he kept it?”

“No. I wasn't happy when he brought it home and I said I didn't want anything to do with it.”

“Is it possible he took it with him?”

“It's possible.”

“You never found it anywhere in the house?”

“I never looked for it.”

“But it would have turned up if you looked through his things.”

“I went through his whole chest of drawers after he died, a while after, and it wasn't there. I wasn't looking for it, you understand. But I would have found it.”

“Was there a place in the house he might have hidden it? I've heard that people put valuables in the freezer sometimes.”

“There was no gun in the freezer; I would know. If he really hid it, it could still be hidden.”

“Did he go directly from the bedroom to the car?”

“I think so, but I can't be sure. Once he was out of the bedroom, I couldn't really tell you where he went. Most of the floors and all the stairs are carpeted, so there's no noise. He went downstairs and a few minutes later I heard the car pull out of the driveway.”

I knew what she was thinking, that after that she never saw him again. As she had spoken, I had almost seen what happened, the man getting out of bed, pulling on convenient clothes, sticking his feet into favorite sneakers, saying good-bye, and going down to the car. And how many times after that had she asked herself why she didn't press him on what was happening? Even now, even a dozen years later, the agony of remembering was all over her face.

“That was it,” she said. “I never saw him again.”

We took a break at that point. Laura offered me coffee, but I preferred a glass of juice, as did Eddie, who was having a great time on the rocking horse. The area of the room he was playing in no longer looked as neat as when we had come in, but I decided to leave the cleanup till we were ready to go or I'd have to do it twice.

After our break, Laura and I went back to our respective places. “When did you sense something was wrong?” I asked.

“I got up about ten, later than I usually did. Larry wasn't there. I went downstairs, called him, then looked in the garage. His car was gone. So I called the plant and talked to the weekend watchman. He seemed confused when I asked him if my husband was there. He must have thought I had gotten the day wrong. As far as he knew, nothing had gone amiss during the night, he certainly hadn't called our house, and Larry had never been there. I felt confused myself, and when I sat down to think it all out I got frightened. I called the local police there and asked if anything had happened near the plant overnight and they said no. I told them what had happened and they said to wait awhile; he would surely come home. Probably I had misunderstood.”

“It's pretty standard for the police to tell you to wait,” I said. “Most people do come home.”

“But Larry didn't. I let the Oakwood Police know what
had happened and they put out an alarm for Larry's car. I called people, but no one had seen him since the party. I don't know what else to tell you, Chris. That's how it happened. No one that I know saw Larry alive after he left our house.”

“Can you tell me about when you found him?”

“He left the house in the early hours of Sunday. You can imagine I was a wreck after that. There were no sightings, nothing. I kept in touch with the police, but they came up with nothing. My sister-in-law came to stay with me, and my children were home. It seemed so strange to have a house full of visitors when all the joy in my heart was gone. Four days after Larry left, in the early hours of Thursday, I thought I heard a sound in my sleep, a bang, but I turned over and ignored it. In the morning, I went downstairs for breakfast and opened the door to the garage as I had been doing each morning since he left and there was his car. I had one moment of absolute joy, as though there had been a reprieve, as though everything might be right again. I was wearing a robe over my nightgown and I dashed over to his car to see if he was there. The garage door behind the car was open, which surprised me, as we never left it open. I got to the car, calling his name, and then I saw what had happened.”

“How terrible,” I said.

“I know I screamed. I could see he was dead. There was blood everywhere. I think I stood there for a moment, covering my eyes, crying, screaming. Then I ran inside. My sister-in-law was in the kitchen, on her way out to find me. I screamed, ‘He's dead! He's dead!' over and over again. My sister-in-law had her arm around me and she reached for the phone and called the police.”

“Did it look to you like suicide, Laura?”

She nodded. “He was shot in the right temple. He was right-handed. They said there were powder burns on his
skin. His fingerprints were on the gun. What more could you want?”

“I think you told me it wasn't his gun. Is that right?”

“It wasn't licensed to him. The police checked. There was something strange about the ownership. I think it had been stolen some years before. I asked them not to check further. I suddenly had a crazy thought that maybe Larry had traded in his licensed gun for this one. I don't know how he came to have it, whether he owned it or found it or what. I just didn't want anything besmirching his name. The Oakwood Police knew he owned a gun, but that wasn't it.”

“So they never found out who owned it?”

“Not after it was stolen. Larry had shot himself and I didn't care whose gun he had used. He was gone and I didn't know why. People offered explanations, but they were halfhearted. They wanted to make me feel better, but nothing could make me feel better. Not then and not now.”

“How do you feel about talking to Betty Linton?”

“I think I have to. Now that you've uncovered this strange connection of the sneakers, I think we have to talk.”

“I'll set it up. It's almost noon and I know you have to be in school. Take it easy for a bit, Laura. This has been a terrible morning for you.”

“If we can make sense out of what happened, I will always be grateful to you.”

“Let's just take it one step at a time.”

I called Betty Linton, who knew nothing of the sneaker mix-up, and filled her in. She was as startled and uncomprehending as Laura Filmore had been, and as interested in meeting Laura as Laura was in getting together with her. I arranged for Laura and me to drive up to Connecticut the next day. Eddie would be at nursery school in the morning,
and Elsie would take care of him in the afternoon. I told Betty to think carefully about the people she had known twelve years and more ago, as we would try to compare lists to look for an overlap. I knew that was a difficult assignment. After so many years, it's hard to remember the names of the neighbors and coworkers, club members, classmates, and other casual acquaintances, but I had nothing else to go on and somehow Darby Maxwell and Lawrence Filmore had crossed paths during the time both were missing. I didn't think they knew each other, but some person or some odd situation must have brought them together. I started thinking about degrees of separation. Who or what had been the unlikely link between these two people?

Laura and I talked all the way up to Connecticut on Friday morning. Jack had given me some ideas of questions to ask, and Laura had come prepared with a couple of file folders of what might be pertinent information.

When we reached the Lintons' house, Laura exclaimed at how lovely it was. It changed her mood from the dark of the trip to almost light. She parked her car and Betty came outside and greeted us.

Inside, we sat at the dining room table so the women could spread out their papers. There was plenty of time before lunch, and we got started right away.

“We can flip a coin,” I said. “I think we should go back twelve years and each of you should talk about addresses, businesses, vacations, friends, and other people you knew. Let's see if we can find a match somewhere.”

Laura began. I had my notebook open and I jotted down what I thought might be important as she spoke. She had lived in Oakwood for most of her married life and had met her husband while she was working in New York when she was in her twenties and he was working in his father's
business. They had owned two houses, a small one in the early days of their marriage and the current one, which they bought when their second child was born.

Betty Linton's life was quite different. She and her first husband had married after she graduated from college almost forty years ago. They lived in an apartment in New York for a little while, then bought the house north of Oakwood. When Darby was born, the marriage began to crumble, although they stayed together for many years. There were visits to doctors and other experts, but the doctors Laura had known were not among them. There were therapies and special schools and finally, when Darby was old enough, residence at Greenwillow. Eventually, there was a divorce. Today Charles Maxwell was remarried and living in California.

Betty had met Brad Linton soon after her separation. A widower, he had children in college and a demanding job. They had bought the house in Connecticut just before they married, each of them selling an old house and starting anew by pooling their resources.

It got to be twelve-thirty and we had found no intersection of the two women's lives. They looked drained, as though they had spent time working out-of-doors instead of sitting in this comfortable room going through papers and talking.

“Let's have lunch,” Betty said, pushing away from the table. “We're not making any headway here. Maybe we need our energy refreshed.”

We all got up and went into the kitchen, each of us doing part of the chore of setting the table. Betty had salads in the refrigerator, so there was little work to do besides getting the coffee going. As though by mutual consent, we talked about other things while we ate, Laura admiring the antiques, Betty asking about my cousin Gene.

When we were done and the table had been cleared, I made a suggestion. “If it wouldn't be too hard on you, Betty, I wonder if you would take us to the house where Darby disappeared.”

“I can do that. What do you expect to find?”

“I'd like Laura to see where it is in case the area rings a bell. And then, if you're up to it, I'd like to walk through the woods and see where we come out.”

She took a moment before answering. “Let me call my friend. She still lives there.”

“That's a good idea,” Laura said while Betty was telephoning. “What you're thinking is that somehow my husband and Betty's son crossed paths during the days that my husband was gone.”

“I can't see any other way that they could have exchanged sneakers.”

“Any other explanation would involve a lot of moving people or things around. If Larry drove up this way to see someone, for whatever reason, and somehow stumbled onto Darby—”

“Or stumbled onto a person who was with Darby.”

“Yes, I see. Darby could have asked someone for help or knocked on someone's door.”

“My friend said it's fine to come over,” Betty said, coming out of the kitchen. “She has a dentist appointment and won't be there by the time we get there, but she's given us carte blanche to walk around the property and into the woods.”

“Then let's go,” I said.

It was a twenty-minute ride and we followed Betty's car. The whole area was very beautiful, houses of many ages set picturesquely far from the road, up little hills, almost hidden by old trees and shrubs. Betty pulled into a long
drive and parked at the side of an old house that was beautifully cared for. We got out and walked on a flagstone path around to the back.

“You can see they have a lovely piece of property,” Betty said, leading us away from the house. “They actually own a few feet of land beyond where the trees start. We were sitting over there.” She pointed to where garden furniture still stood. “We had all had lunch and the boys got up and started to walk. My friend was showing me some pictures of a vacation they had taken, so my attention wasn't on Darby.”

We reached the woods and kept walking, moving into the dark forest as though through Alice's looking glass. It was a different world. The trees were now bare and the floor of the forest was almost soft from the many layers of leaves. We kept to a path, but after a while it dwindled into nothing.

“Did they bring dogs to help find him?” I asked.

“Yes, but somewhere around here they lost the scent. They said it seemed that he had gone around in circles. Anyway, they continued onward, the way we're walking.”

“Do you know your way?” Laura asked, her voice tight.

“I do now. I walked it so many times after Darby disappeared, I think I could find my way in the dark.”

“I can see how you could get lost here very easily.
I'm
not even sure how to get back.”

“Don't worry. I know the way.”

But Laura's observation was the same as mine. Without the sure guidance of Betty Linton, I would already have lost my bearings. A tree I had sighted as a landmark now seemed in the wrong place. I took a moment to pivot, looking in every direction for light from a clearing, but I found none. I thought of the lost boy, the young man with the mind and fears of a boy, and I felt his anxiety as though it were my own. Had he called for his friend or his mother?
I wondered. At what point was he too far from them to be heard? When did he become desperate?

We continued on and I began to have my own fears, that maybe Betty had not been here for so long that she could lose her way as her son had, had perhaps already lost it and wasn't aware. I was third in line as we walked, my eyes peering forward for the inevitable light, or the light that I hoped was inevitable.

And then I saw it. I felt relief and wondered if Laura did, too.

“We're coming out,” she said ahead of me, and I could hear the joy in her voice. She had been even more frightened than I.

“Yes!” Betty called, turning back to us. “It's just up here.”

A few minutes later we entered a meadow. My eyes hurt from the bright light. I stopped and looked around, hoping to find a house nearby that might have been a place where Darby knocked on a door for help, but I saw nothing except more trees beyond the grass.

“Where's the nearest house?” I asked when we were together in the sunlight.

“It's still some distance from here. There's a small lake or pond over that way.” She pointed left. “Through another patch of trees. People swim there in the summer, not many, but it was too cool that day for anyone to go into the water.”

“How do they find their way?” I asked.

“There's a path from there that eventually gets to a road. I don't know if Darby saw it. If he had found it and stayed on it, he'd be alive today.”

I turned to Laura. “Does anything here look familiar?”

“Far from it. I'm sure I've never been here in my life.”

“Did your husband ever talk about going to Connecticut? An old swimming hole? Friends from his childhood?”

She shook her head. “Never. Absolutely never.”

“You want to go any farther?” Betty asked.

I looked at my watch and saw that Laura was doing the same. “Not today. But I may come back, if you don't mind, and go as far as you can take me. I'm especially interested in seeing the houses that Darby might have stumbled on.”

“We can do that whenever you like.” Betty turned back to the woods we had left and started walking.