The Mother's Day Murder (25 page)

“Interesting. What led you there?”

“Randy may have read something damning about her in Joseph’s file. She may have tried to blackmail Jane into telling what she knew or suspected about Joseph, without realizing Jane would have told her anything she wanted to know without being coerced. Jane doesn’t have any warm fuzzy feelings about St. Stephen’s.”

“And then you came down a couple of days later and Jane figured Randy was telling all anyway.”

“Right.”

“So what can I do for you? I gather this isn’t a ‘Hi honey, how’re you doing?’ call.”

“I want to know if Jane owns a car.”

“OK. How ’bout a licensed handgun, same caliber as our friendly neighbor’s?”

“That, too.”

“I’ll get back to you.”

I knew it was a long shot but all the facts fit. Jane had left the convent under a cloud and the reason for her departure might well be in the file. It must have seemed much more than a coincidence to her to have two people come to her in the space of two or three days and ask about Joseph’s whereabouts twenty years ago, but in truth, Randy and I had been drawn to her from very different directions. Randy had found something in Jane’s file that could be used against her. I was merely looking for someone who had been at the convent twenty years ago and wouldn’t mind gossiping about it.

But there it was: Randy appeared on Jane’s doorstep, asked her questions about Joseph, and got a ride to my house the next evening. Then, only about twenty-four
hours later, there I was asking some of the same questions. It made it look as though Randy had gotten what she wanted from Jane and then gone ahead and spilled her secrets anyway.

Jack came home with the news I was waiting for. “She owns a car,” he said. “So far so good for your assumptions. But no handgun. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have one, just that she hasn’t registered one. She could have picked up a gun in another state and brought it back to New York illegally. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“So Randy could have knocked on Jane’s door on Wednesday night and found out what she wanted to know about Joseph. Then Jane could have driven Randy up here on Thursday.”

“Jane Cirillo works,” Jack said. “I did a little checking. She has a job at a bank in Manhattan.”

“That’s why Randy arrived Thursday evening. Maybe Jane has flexible hours and took Friday off when I drove in to see her.”

“That’s possible. But working for a bank, if she did any funny stuff at the convent, that could lose her her job if it became known.”

“And that’s exactly the point. She must have done some ‘funny stuff’ and there’s a record of it in Joseph’s file.”

“You know, you don’t have enough to get a warrant, but you’ve got enough to make me think you’re on the right track.”

“Me, too.”

“But I can’t let you go see her alone, Chris. I don’t mean to act the heavy, but if you’re right about her, this
is a shrewd woman who owns a deadly weapon that she might easily use for the second time if you’re alone with her in her apartment.”

“I could take her to lunch,” I said. “With you at the next table.”

“Joe Fox and me at the next table. This is his case, whatever you think of him.”

To be honest, I didn’t think much of him, but Jack was right. I couldn’t chance being alone in an apartment with a killer who very likely still had her weapon. “If you’re there, I’ll accept it.”

“Let me give him a call.”

It took a little doing, a couple of calls to Jane, one to ask if she would join me for lunch the next day, the second, after talking to Joe Fox who set it up with the restaurant, to tell her where we would meet.

Elsie took Eddie. The farther away from criminals that I can keep him, the better off we’ll be. Jack and I drove into the city earlier than our appointment so that Jack and Joe Fox could look around the restaurant and be seated when I arrived. I knew from talking to Jack that detectives like to get to a meet early, check out the area, especially the doors and windows inside and out. It cuts down on surprises if the meet goes bad or gets ugly.

Jane had not met either of them so they could sit in the open without being recognized. Jack went into the restaurant at noon. I had told Jane we would meet at twelve-fifteen. At ten after, I went in and took my seat, leaving empty the one closer to Joe Fox who was at the next table, his back to ours.

Jane was late but not very. She was less casually dressed than the first time I had seen her. Today I could believe she worked in a bank Monday through Friday.
She sat down and ordered a drink and we exchanged a little small talk.

“Was I any help to you last time we met?” she asked finally, sipping a whiskey and soda.

“A lot. I really appreciated your taking the time. I wanted to ask you a few more questions. I understand Randy Collins came to see you.”

Her face clouded. “Never heard the name. Is that a man or a woman?”

And then I remembered. Randy had been playing a part the last days of her life. “I meant Tina Richmond.”

“Tina. Yeah. I did run into a girl named Tina. What’s the connection?”

“I think she was also interested in Sister Joseph.”

“Mmm.”

“Did you meet with Sister Joseph the Sunday before last?” I asked.

“Did she tell you that?”

“She didn’t tell me anything. She didn’t attend mass at St. Stephen’s that day and she’s refused to say where she was. I think she met with you.”

“Why would she do that?” The smile had gone. Jane was on guard now.

“Because you called her and said you wanted to talk to her. You thought she had broken a promise to you.”

“What’s this about, Chris? What’s the point of these questions?”

“I need to find the truth.”

“The truth? About what Joseph did on a Sunday morning? About where Joseph spent a year of her life when you were a kid?”

“I know about what she did twenty years ago. I need
to know what happened the Sunday before last. I’d like to know where you were.”

“Sleeping in my own little bed.”

“I don’t think so. I think you met the girl who called herself Tina and you shot her. And I think after that you met Sister Joseph and told her she had betrayed you.”

She stared at me over our appetizers, her fork in her hand, her eyes cold and hard. “What business is it of yours who I met, where I went, what I did?”

“It’s my business because that girl ended up dead down the street from my house. And she was a guest in my home at the time.”

“Next thing you’ll tell me she had an ax in her hand.”

My heart did something crazy. “Why did she chop down the tree?” I asked.

“She was one of those adorable little girls who wanted to set the world straight. She told me some crazy story about that tree and the trouble it was causing for two families. She could set everything right if she just got rid of it. That’s how I felt about her.”

It was chilling hearing her say that. “So she chopped it down.”

“I turned the corner and there she was. She had called me the night before and told me she had gotten herself in a mess, nothing was working out, whoever she was staying with didn’t believe her story, and she was out of money. Money was what she wanted, of course. I said I’d meet her early in the morning and give her some and said she’d better get out of my life. But that never works, you know.”

“Blackmailers don’t give up,” I said.

“Never.”

“She would have. It wasn’t the
money
she wanted; it was information.”

“I told her what I knew.”

“So you called Joseph and set up a meeting for later that morning.”

“You bet. You were right. She had betrayed me.”

“I don’t think Joseph has ever betrayed anyone in her life. I think the girl who called herself Tina found some things out about you that she had no right to know and she used that information to her advantage.”

“That’s what you say.”

It was what I knew. “So you shot the girl to keep her from telling what she knew about you.”

“I would have lost my job. I would never have gotten another one. I might have been prosecuted.”

“What did you do, Jane?” I had a few ideas but I wanted to hear the truth. I didn’t think Joseph would ever tell me.

“You might say I robbed the poorbox. Let’s leave it at that. You’d be surprised what goes on up there. I could tell you—”

“I don’t want to hear,” I said angrily. Then I said, “The poorbox,” more to myself than to her. Surely she had not murdered Randy over something so minor, albeit unethical. I tried to think back. I had been at St. Stephen’s when Sister Jane Anthony disappeared and no one would talk about it. How many years ago had it been? Eight? Nine? I couldn’t put my finger on it. And then I remembered. I had gone to the chapel one morning to pray and had noticed something amiss. Several beautiful old icons were missing. At least one was gold with jeweled eyes. I had intended to ask what had happened to them but with my busy schedule, the day
had passed and when I went to the chapel for evening prayers, everything was back in place. I had assumed some cleaning had been done, but now I knew better.

“You took the statues,” I said. “The gold one with the jewels and all the beautiful old silver pieces.”

“You have a good memory.” She drained her glass.

“And Joseph knew it was you and made you put it all back.”

“She caught me red-handed. She said she wouldn’t turn me over to the police if I signed a statement saying what I had done and got the hell out of St. Stephen’s before noon. She said if she ever heard that I’d been involved in felonious activity—that’s how she put it—she’d haul out my sworn statement and turn it over to the authorities. She had one of the nuns witness my signing.”

“And then she put the statement in the Sister Jane Anthony file,” I said.

“I don’t know where she put it. I had an uncle who got me a job where you’ve got to be squeaky clean and Joseph wrote a letter of recommendation that I’d been a nun at the convent for so-and-so many years and had left of my own volition. Even without the usual accolades, I got the job. My uncle was an officer and who could quarrel with a nun’s cloistered life?”

“I suppose Joseph filed a copy of her recommendation, too.”

“And then,” Jane went on, ignoring my comment, “this Tina shows up a couple of weeks ago and starts asking questions. She’s a novice at St. Stephen’s, she tells me, and there are things she needs to know about Sister Joseph. I told her I had nothing to say and she pulls out stuff about my past that I couldn’t believe. She
knew where I worked. She knew what I’d done. The only way she could have found all that out was from Joseph. Or maybe from the nun who witnessed my signature, but I don’t think she really knew what was going on.”

“Joseph never told anyone, Jane,” I said. “She never even told the police that she’d seen you that Sunday morning. She was as good as her word.”

“You think this Tina went through the convent files?”

“I’m sure of it. What did you tell her?”

“The same thing I told you, that Joseph had taken a year off a long time ago. That I didn’t think she had boyfriends. Then this Tina asked me for some money so she could take the train somewhere. I told her I’d drive her. After work, I drove her up to a place called Oakwood.”

“And she knocked on my door.”

“Small world,” Jane said.

We had begun eating. I was being very careful not to look at the table with Jack and the detective but I sensed they were aware of what was going on at my table. Detective Fox had a canvas bag slung over the back of his chair and I thought it was likely he was recording at least Jane’s side of the conversation.

“When did Tina call you back?” I asked.

“Some time on Saturday, I think. Nothing was going right. She was out of money. We’ve all heard it before. I didn’t like where this was going.”

“Where did you get the gun, Jane?”

“I got it. What difference does it make where?”

“Why didn’t you shoot Sister Joseph, too?” I asked. “When you saw her that Sunday morning. You thought she betrayed you. Why did you let her go on living?”

She smiled a little at that. “I assumed she’d left word where she was going. She’s a nun, after all. She couldn’t
just get up and leave the convent and go off somewhere without telling someone where she’d gone. If she turned up dead or missing and my name and address were on her desk, I was in big trouble.”

That was good thinking. It was even possible Joseph had left such a note on her desk, and then destroyed it when she came back. “How did you come to be home the day I dropped in on you?”

“Sheer luck. I had planned to take that day off a long time ago. On any other weekday, I’d’ve been at the bank. But when you started asking me the same questions Tina had, I had to believe she had told you about me. How else could you have found out?”

“She never told me,” I said, feeling great sadness. “I just happened to think of you and I wanted to talk to someone who had been at the convent twenty years ago and who might be inclined to open up.”

“I guess it’s too bad,” she said. “I didn’t have anything against her, except that I didn’t want her ruining my life. As for you, don’t even think of telling this wild story to anyone else. The gun doesn’t exist. And after I have my last bite, I’m gone.”

“I don’t think so, Miss Cirillo,” Joe Fox said. He had gotten up from his chair and come to our table. He flashed his shield and said, “Keep your hands where I can see them. I’m placing you under arrest. You have the right to remain silent.”

27

I sat there for a long time after they left, my heart throbbing. I was glad it was over but it had been traumatic. Jack moved over to my table and held my hand while I tried to calm down.

“Did you hear?” I asked.

“Almost nothing. Joe had a recorder in the bag on the chair. It should have picked up everything. By the way, he said he intends to go to St. Stephen’s and apologize personally to Sister Joseph.”

“He should.” I drank most of my ice water.

“Maybe you’d like something a little stronger than that.”

“I don’t think so. I just wish it hadn’t turned out this way for Randy Collins. She picked the wrong person to question. It’s terrible that a life ended because of a bad choice.”