The Silver Anniversary Murder (5 page)

“Joe Fox thinks this woman, the victim, might have a record,” I said to Jack when we were alone in the family room.

“Sounds like you don’t.”

“I don’t rule it out, but I think she could have been hiding from someone, someone who wanted to kill her.”

“You could both be right. Someone did kill her, after all.”

“What I mean is, she may not have been hiding her past, just trying to hide herself from someone who had a grudge or who wanted something from her.”

“It’s as good a theory as any. Either you or Joe will have to find out more about her so as to trace back to whatever she was hiding from. The fresh manicure was a good lead. It would be nice if you could find a friend.”

“Or an employer. She might have given her high school or college credentials to get the job, or the names of other companies she worked for.”

“I hate to tell you that employers don’t do much checking.”

“There has to be something, Jack. We live in such a technologically sophisticated age that I can’t believe a person can shop and take care of a car and yet live so easily with an assumed identity even if she paid for everything in cash.”

“Which is a good assumption.”

“But what about the pharmacy? Even if you’re healthy, as I am, my dentist occasionally prescribes an antibiotic for me.”

“And a prescription presupposes a dentist or a doctor.”

“Who will know you by whatever name you give him the first day you go. I’m trying to remember if the dentist required my Social Security number.”

“Suppose you gave it to him. If this Holly/Rosette woman wrote down nine digits, what are the chances the doctor, the dentist, the pharmacist, or even a surgeon checked them out, especially if she said she had no medical insurance and would pay her bill in cash?”

“No chance,” I agreed. “So here we are in a society that tracks you in and out of stores, offices, hospitals, and whatever, and we can get away with using a fraudulent name and ID number and no one knows. It seems paradoxical.”

“It may be, but it works—that is, until a cop hauls you over for speeding and finds a bunch of inconsistencies.”

“I’m going to have a go at pharmacies tomorrow. Hopefully, someone will recognize Holly/Rosette’s picture and tell me she took an unusual medication for a rare condition.”

“And everything about her life is documented including the names of her parents, her children, and all her siblings.”

“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

“Dream on, honey. And good luck. I’m sure Joe Fox will give you double flowers if you pull that off.”

5

I daydreamed that Holly/Rosette Whatever might use a different name everywhere she went. After canvassing pharmacies and banks, hair salons and department stores, I might accumulate twenty or thirty names attached to her picture. But I decided not to worry about that unlikely situation. I got Eddie off to school, nearly his last week, and put my notebook in my bag. As I was getting ready to leave, the phone rang.

“Hope I haven’t bothered you, Mrs. Brooks.” It was Joe Fox.

“Not at all. Have you something to tell me?”

“You know they’ve been doing DNA analysis on the blood in the apartment and the tissue of the body.”

“Yes.”

“So far we haven’t gotten a match on the body’s prints or on the blood.”

“Which means no records.”

“Right. Not so far. My people are out there visiting banks and stores near where she lived.”

“She didn’t bank where she lived and she didn’t shop where she lived.” It seemed such a waste of time to me. “This is a woman who’s trying to keep a low profile. She’s not going to walk into supermarkets where a neighbor who knows her as Holly or Mrs. Mitchell might run into her and make small talk that could compromise her.”

“You could be right—you’ve been right before—but this is the way we generally do it. Dare I ask what you’re up to this bright Monday morning?”

“I’m checking pharmacies,” I admitted.

“And none of them will be near the apartment complex.”

“Not unless I fail farther away.”

“I’d put my money on your not failing, but please keep me in your loop.”

“My loop,” I repeated, smiling. “My very little loop. You and me, Joe. Without you in it, it’s a straight line going nowhere.”

“That’ll be the day.”

There is nothing more boring than basic detective work. Ask the same questions to fifty different faces and hope one lights up. And then ask more questions. I did this the way I’d done the manicurists on Saturday, checking the yellow pages, sketching a map, driving to the most distant location first. Once again, I thought she might do her drug and cosmetic shopping where she worked, but since that wasn’t confirmed, this was all I had to go on.

It would be nice to say that I dropped into the right drugstore first, but it didn’t happen that way. I dragged myself from one to another, often showing the picture to several people, as some of the chain pharmacies have many pharmacists working for them—and there was always the chance that the one I wanted was off on Mondays. I presented the picture and gave everyone the two names I had. Some looked at the face intently, which I appreciated; others gave it a cursory glance and turned away with a bored expression. No one recognized her.

I had drawn a semicircle several miles deep for my canvassing area. It was a semicircle and not a full circle because Oakwood is on the Long Island Sound, not that this made my task any easier; I just increased the distance from the center to the farthest drugstore. A lot of heads shook; no one identified her.

I stopped for lunch at a restaurant I sometimes take Eddie to, looking at my list as I ate, counting the places that didn’t have check marks next to them. The cops, I thought, had probably found the right one in the first ten minutes of their search, a hundred yards outside the garden apartments, all my theories shot. I sipped iced coffee and thought about what to do. Maybe it wasn’t too late to retrieve the dollar I’d bet.

I finally decided to check out a privately owned drugstore in the same little strip mall where I’d eaten, even though it was one of the last pharmacies on my list. It was in Oakwood, but it was more than a mile from the Mitchell residence. I went to the counter at the back of the store and asked the young man if he knew the woman in the pictures.

“The cops were here this morning with the same picture,” he said.

“And?”

“And I told them I didn’t know her.”

“Did they ask anyone else who works in the store?”

“Mr. Greeves was out when they came in.”

“Is he here now?” It felt like pulling teeth.

“Yeah. Wait a minute.”

I knew Mr. Greeves slightly. When we married, Jack insisted we open an account here. I always resist such ideas, wanting to pay as I go, but he pointed out that medication could be expensive. I found out how right he was the first time Eddie got sick as a baby—and I didn’t have enough in my purse to pay for medicine that I needed right away.

“Mrs. Brooks, how are you?” Mr. Greeves is a big, graying, friendly man and a lifelong pharmacist. I’m told his father owned this business before him.

“In good health,” I responded. “I wonder if you recognize this woman.”

I handed him the sketch of her face. His forehead tightened as he pored over it. He jutted his lower lip out. “I don’t know,” he said.

I gave him the full-length sketch and watched a slow smile appear. “You know her?”

“She came in maybe a month ago. No one was at the counter so I waited on her myself. It’s the fingernails that made me remember. They were so bright and fresh and such a pretty pink. I said something about it and she kind of blushed.”

I felt hope rise within me. “Did she have an account with you?”

“I’m not sure she was ever in here before that day or after.”

“Did she ask you to fill a prescription?” I asked, almost crossing my fingers.

“No, nothing like that. She took a couple of items off the shelf and paid cash. That’s when I noticed her nails. And she was dressed like that, in a suit, very business-like.”

“I don’t suppose she gave you her name.”

“No reason to. It was a cash transaction. But that’s her. I’d bet on it.”

That was as far as it went. She had simply been a woman off the street picking up a few necessities. Well, I thought, at least I had gone one small step beyond the police.

I went back to my list, determined now to show both pictures to everybody. You never know what will trigger a memory.

Elsie was picking up Eddie at school so I didn’t have a deadline. It’s amazing how many pharmacies were in this group of towns. It made me wonder how people picked only one for themselves. Mr. Greeves’s store delivers, and that had been our main criterion—that and the charge account.

I grew weary and bleary-eyed, not to mention tired of hearing people say no. It occurred to me as I walked into what would surely be the last drugstore I would visit today that I should buy some Band-Aids for the bathroom upstairs that Eddie uses. I took a good-size box off the shelf and walked up to the counter, waiting behind an old woman with a cane. The cashier handed her two prescriptions in a paper bag, and the woman gave her name for them to charge the purchase.

I put my box on the counter.

“Anything else?” The cashier was a middle-aged woman who looked vaguely familiar. I thought she might live in Oakwood.

“I wonder if you recognize this woman.” I laid the pictures on the counter and took out my wallet to pay.

“She comes in a lot.”

“She does?”

“Yes. I haven’t seen her for a while, but I was away on vacation, so I might have missed her.”

“Do you know her name?”

“I don’t think she has an account with us. She pays in cash. I always have to make change from a fifty.”

“Does she bring in prescriptions?”

“I don’t know. Let me ask the pharmacist.” She went behind the high counter where the pharmacists worked and showed the pictures around.

Before she came back, a woman’s voice behind me said, “I know her. You looking for her?”

I turned to see the old woman with the cane. “I’m looking for people who know her.”

“That’s Rosette Parker. She picks me up sometimes in the morning and takes me to the bus stop. It’s very nice of her but it’s so much trouble getting into that SUV of hers, sometimes I wish she’d just go by and let me walk.”

I smiled with sympathy. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“Quite some time ago. Weeks. But the weather’s been nice.”

“Ma’am?”

The woman behind the counter was back. The pharmacists didn’t recognize the pictures, she said. I thanked her and turned back to my new informant. “May I take you somewhere?” I offered.

“Just home. If you don’t own a van or a pickup.” She laughed.

I assured her I drove a small car and that she could get in and out of it easily. Outside she told me the cane was more for reassurance than physical necessity. She had had a hip replacement and was doing very well.

We talked while I drove the short distance. “She told me her name and I told her mine, maybe the second or third time she picked me up. I’m Gladys French, by the way. Pleased to meet you.”

“Christine Bennett. Go on. I’d like to know everything you know about her. Was her husband ever in the car when she picked you up?”

“He was usually there, but she always drove. I think she dropped him off where he could get a ride or a train into the city. I got off first, so I don’t know.”

“What was he like?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” Gladys French said. “He was a man. He sat in the back, which was funny, and read the paper. Sometimes he’d say, ‘IBM was up a point, hon.’ Or ‘That damn GE was down again, hon.’ He always called her hon.”

“Do you know where he worked?”

“Haven’t the faintest. But I’m pretty sure they didn’t work in the same place. That’s why she was driving, so she could drop him off and go on her way.”

“Did she ever tell you where she worked or what she did?”

“Not that I recall. Pull into the next driveway.”

The house was white with turquoise trim, a doll’s house with lush plantings and a charming dogwood tree in front. I drove up to the one-car garage and turned off the motor, expecting to help her to the front door, or at least ready to offer to do so.

“Come inside. We’ll have a cup of tea.”

I looked at my watch. I couldn’t leave Eddie forever and I had dinner to cook.

“Oh, don’t look at the time. Come in for fifteen minutes. We’ll sit and have a nice cup of tea and you’ll be on your way.”

“That sounds like fun.” I got out and opened the door for her.

She was steady on her feet, even without using the cane, which hung on her left arm. She opened her front door, and we went inside to a living room filled with fine old furniture and a beautiful Oriental rug.

“Come in the kitchen with me and we’ll talk while I boil the water.”

I followed her and took down the cups and saucers at her bidding. They were the kind of fine china my aunt always used.

“What’s your interest in Rosette?” she asked. “I’ve been answering a lot of questions but I don’t know what you’re after.”

“She died, Gladys,” I said.

“No.” She turned from the stove to look at me, shock on her face. “A young woman like that? She couldn’t have been more than fifty.” Then she said, “That’s why I haven’t seen her these last weeks, isn’t it?”

“She died about a month ago. There’s reason to believe she was murdered.”

Glady drew in her breath. “Murdered!”

“Her body was just found last week. But she was missing for a while.”

“Oh my goodness.” She pulled a chair away from the small table and plopped into it. “Excuse me. Just hearing that made me feel dizzy. It’s all right.” She raised her hand to keep me away. “I’m fine. Poor thing. And who are you then? Her daughter?”

“I’m a stranger who got involved in a complicated way. The police are looking into her death and I thought I’d try to find out what I could for myself. It was just luck I ran into you in the pharmacy.”

“Well, with my prescriptions, you could run into me there almost any day of the week. How did she die?”

“They don’t know yet. They’re checking for drugs and poisons and things like that.”

“She didn’t do drugs.”

“I’m sure she didn’t. But she may have been given something. We’ll find out when the lab work is done. Can you talk now?”

“Have I stopped talking?” She smiled and then jumped up as the teakettle began to whistle. “Go ahead, ask your questions. We’ll just let the tea steep a minute if it’s all the same to you.”

“It’s fine.”

We sat at the table. Before each of us was a cup with an inverted saucer over it and a string and tag hanging over the side. After a couple of silent minutes, Gladys put her saucer under the cup, squeezed the tea bag by wrapping the string around it and a spoon, and then took a little sugar with a dry spoon. She pushed the sugar pot toward me, but I chose a slice of lemon instead.

“Did you ever notice Rosette’s license plate number?” I asked, doubting that she had.

“Well, you know, it’s not the sort of thing I ever look at, but hers had three Bs in a row, so when I heard a honk and turned around and saw the Bs, I knew it was Rosette.”

“That’s very helpful, Gladys. I think the police will be able to find the vehicle with that information.”

“Why don’t they just look up her name?”

I realized I’d gotten myself in a corner. “She may have used more than one name.”

“No. Why would she do that?”

“Nobody seems to know. Did she call her husband by name?”

“Let me think.” She sipped, then sipped again. “Not that I recall. And he only called her hon. I thought that was cute.”

“So do I. Tell me, did she ever say where she was going those mornings she picked you up? Work? A particular place?”

“She could’ve said White Plains. I think she did once. Oh yes, there was one other thing. On the seat where I sat or on the floor on the side where I sat there was always a very handsome briefcase. Black, good leather—you know? Usually it was facedown, but one morning I saw initials on it in gold. But they weren’t hers. I knew her name by then.”

“Do you remember what they were?”

“There could’ve been an M, but I wouldn’t swear to it.”

Mitchell, I thought. Maybe they used Mitchell in the building where they lived and also where they worked, but not in any of the places they frequented nearby. Then no one they ran into could connect them to their apartment, send them a letter, or find them if they were being sought by someone potentially dangerous. I thought again that there must be a PO box somewhere where they picked up their mail, or perhaps they rented a box at one of those private places that have sprung up in the last ten years.