On the Street Where You Live

  I’ll be fine as soon as I sell it, Frieze promised himself.

  “Do you intend to pour that coffee or just stand there holding the cup, Bobby?” Natalie’s tone was amused.

  “Pour it, I guess.”

  He knew Natalie was getting sick of his moods, but for the most part she’d been uncomplaining. She looked gorgeous, even with her hair tousled around her shoulders and no makeup and wearing that old chenille robe he hated.

  He leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

  “Spontaneous gesture of affection. Something that’s been lacking for a long time,” she said.

  “I know. It’s just that I’ve been under a lot of pressure.” He decided to tell her about the prospective offer. “I’ve put The Seasoner up for sale. We may have a buyer.”

  “Bobby, fantastic!” She jumped up and hugged him. “Will you get your money back?”

  “Most of it, even allowing for some bargaining on the price.” As he said these words, Bob Frieze knew he was whistling in the dark.

  “Then promise me once that’s done you’ll sell this house and we’ll move to Manhattan.”

  “I promise.” I want to get out of here too, he thought. I have to get out of here.

  “I think we should leave early for the memorial Mass. You didn’t forget about that, did you?”

  “Hardly.”

  And after that, he thought, we go back to the Lawrence house, where I haven’t been since that night I spent so much time talking to Martha.

  Then we go to Stafford’s place to get grilled by Duggan about what we were doing early the morning after the party.

  He dreaded both sessions. The problem was, he remembered the party, but not what followed. Early that next morning he’d had one of his episodes. He hadn’t come out of it until he found himself showering in the bathroom. His hands were grimy and his jeans and tee shirt had patches of dirt on them, he remembered.

  He had planned to work in the garden that morning. It was his one hobby and always calmed him down.

  I’m sure I worked in the garden that morning, he told himself, as he went up to dress for the memorial Mass for Martha Lawrence, and that’s certainly what I’m going to tell Duggan.

  twenty-nine ________________

  AS HE HAD PROMISED, Will Stafford arrived at 10:40 on the dot on Saturday morning, to pick up Emily. She was waiting for him downstairs, her purse and gloves ready on the table in the foyer.

  She decided that it had been a stroke of luck that she had brought her new black-and-white hounds-tooth check suit with her to Spring Lake, since most of the clothes she had here were distinctly casual.

  Will obviously shared her feeling about how to dress. At the closing last Wednesday, he had been wearing a sports jacket; today, a dark blue suit, white shirt, and subdued blue tie were his choice of suitable garb for the occasion.

  “You look lovely,” he said quietly. “I just wish we were dressed up to go to a different kind of gathering.”

  “So do I.”

  He gestured toward the back of the house. “I see the contractor is filling in the hole out there. Are they satisfied there’s nothing else to be found?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “That’s good. We’d better be on our way.” As Emily picked up her purse and set the alarm, Will Stafford smiled. “Why do I get the feeling that I’m always rushing you? The other day it was to get over here from breakfast for the final inspection. If you had known what was going to happen, would you have backed out on the purchase?”

  “Believe it or not, that hasn’t even occurred to me.”

  “That’s good.”

  He put his hand under her elbow as they went down the steps, and Emily realized it gave her a sense of emotional and physical security to feel it there.

  It has been a rough few days, she thought. Maybe it’s taken more out of me than I realized.

  It’s even more than that, she decided, as Will opened the door of the car and she slipped into the passenger seat. In a crazy way, I feel as if this memorial Mass isn’t just for Martha Lawrence. It’s for Madeline too.

  As Will began to drive, she told him how she felt, then added, “I had been wrestling with the idea that to go to this Mass for a girl I never knew might seem like being a voyeur. I was honestly troubled about it, but now it seems different.”

  “Different in what way?”

  “I believe in eternal life, that heaven exists. I’d like to think that those two young girls—who must have been so frightened in the last moments of their life; who were murdered a hundred years apart and their bodies dumped in my backyard—are still together now. I want to believe that they’re now in ‘a place of refreshment, light, and peace,’ as Scripture says.”

  “Where do you think their murderer is now?” Will asked as he started the car. “And what will be his fate someday?”

  Startled, Emily turned and stared at him. “Will, surely you mean murderers! Two separate people.”

  He glanced at her as he laughed. “Good God, Emily, I’m starting to sound like the nutty tabloid writers. Of course I mean murderers. Two. Plural. One long-since dead. The other probably out there somewhere.”

  They were silent for the few minutes it took them to drive around the lake and for St. Catherine’s Church to come into view. It was an exquisite domed Romanesque structure. Emily knew it had been built in 1901 by a wealthy man as a memorial to his deceased seventeen-year-old daughter. It seemed to her to be a particularly appropriate place for this service.

  They could see a steady stream of cars approaching the church and parking around it. “I wonder if Martha’s murderer is in one of those cars, Will?” Emily said.

  “If he is from Spring Lake, as the cops seem to think, I doubt very much that he’d have the nerve to stay away. It would be too conspicuous not to be here, grieving with the family.”

  Grieving with the family, Emily thought. I wonder which of Madeline’s friends, with blood on his hands, grieved with our family one hundred and ten years ago.

  thirty ________________

  AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK on Saturday morning, Joan Hodges was on her way to the beauty salon to have her hair frosted when the phone rang. It was Dr. Madden’s sister Esther, phoning from Connecticut.

  Her voice was troubled. “Joan, was Lillian going away this weekend?”

  “No.”

  “I tried to call her last night at about eleven-thirty. When she didn’t answer, I thought she might have gone out with friends after her class, but I’ve phoned twice this morning and I still can’t reach her.”

  “Sometimes she turns off the phone. With all the pestering from the media over this murder investigation, she probably did just that. I’ll go over and just make sure everything’s fine with her.” Joan tried to sound reassuring, in spite of her own misgivings.

  “I don’t like to put you out.”

  “You’re not putting me out. It’s a fifteen-minute drive.”

  Her hair appointment completely forgotten, Joan drove as fast as she dared. The sinking feeling in her stomach and the lump in her throat betrayed the panic that she was trying to keep in check. Something was terribly wrong. She knew it.

  Dr. Madden’s house was on a half-acre lot on Laurel Street, three blocks from the ocean. It’s such a beautiful day, Joan thought as she pulled into the driveway. Please, God, let her have gone for a long walk. Or let her have forgotten to turn up the ringer on the phone.

  As Joan approached the house, she saw that the bedroom shades were down, and the newspaper was on the front porch. Her hands trembling now, she fumbled for the key to the office door. She knew that if Dr. Madden had locked the connecting door from the office to the rest of the house, there was a spare key hidden in her desk.

  She stepped into the small vestibule. In the bright sunshine she did not notice that the lights in the office were on. Her hands soaked with perspiration, her breath shallow, she went into her own office. The file drawers were open. Files had been pulled out
, emptied, and tossed aside, the contents strewn all over the floor.

  Her legs resisting her attempt to run, Joan entered Lillian Madden’s office.

  The shriek that ripped from within her was only an agonized moan when it left her lips. The body of Dr. Madden was slumped over her desk, her head turned to one side, her hand still clenched, as if it had been holding something. Her eyes were open and bulging, her lips drawn apart, as if still gasping for air.

  A cord was twisted tightly around her neck.

  Joan did not remember running out of the office, down the porch steps, across the lawn to the sidewalk screaming all the way. When she became aware again, she was surrounded by Lillian Madden’s neighbors, who had rushed out of their homes, drawn by her hysterical cries.

  As her knees crumpled and merciful darkness blotted out the gruesome image of her murdered friend and employer, a thought flickered through Joan’s mind: Dr. Madden believed that people who die a violent death return very quickly in a new incarnation. If that’s true, I wonder how soon she’ll be back?

  thirty-one ________________

  THEY ARE BEING simply magnificent, Emily thought. She and Will Stafford had just arrived at the Lawrence home, where an informal receiving line had formed in the spacious living room. Martha’s grandparents, the senior Lawrences, silver-haired and straight-backed octogenarians; Martha’s parents, George and Amanda Lawrence, a patrician couple in their late fifties; and their other daughter, Christine, a younger version of her mother, and Christine’s husband, were standing together, greeting their guests and accepting condolences.

  The dignity and serenity with which they had conducted themselves during the memorial Mass had filled Emily with admiration.

  She and Will had been in a pew at a right angle to where the family was seated, and she had been able to see them clearly. Although tears had welled in their eyes, they had all sat composed and attentive throughout the service, Christine sitting next to her parents, her new baby, Martha’s namesake, in her arms.

  When one of Martha’s friends broke down weeping as she eulogized her, Emily had felt her own eyes fill with tears. At that point she saw Amanda Lawrence reach over and take the baby from Christine. She had held her close, the little baby’s head tucked gently under her chin.

  “I kissed her and she kissing back could not know, that my kiss was given to her sister folded close under deepening snow.”

  The poignant lines from the James Russell Lowell poem had run through Emily’s mind as she watched Amanda Lawrence taking comfort from her newborn granddaughter even as her murdered daughter was eulogized.

  Will introduced her to them. They realized who she was immediately. “This happened in your own family four generations ago,” Martha’s father said. “We only pray that whoever took our daughter’s life will be brought to justice.”

  “Ignoring the reincarnation nonsense, do you think that Martha’s death may have been intended to copy what happened to Madeline Shapley?” Amanda Lawrence asked.

  “Yes, I do,” Emily said. “And I even believe that a written confession or statement may exist that the present-day killer has found. I’m digging into old records and books, trying to piece together a picture of Madeline and her friends. I’m looking for any references to her, or maybe impressions that other people had of her at that time.”

  George and Amanda Lawrence exchanged glances, then he turned to his parents. “Mother, don’t you have quite a few photograph albums and other memorabilia from your grandmother’s time?”

  “Oh, yes, dear. All packed away in that cabinet in the attic. My maternal grandmother, Julia Gordon, was very meticulous. She wrote captions under all the pictures, listing the date, place, event, and the names of the people and she kept extensive diaries.” The senior Mrs. Lawrence looked inquiringly at Emily.

  Julia Gordon’s name had been sprinkled throughout the diary excerpts in the book Reflections of a Girlhood. She had been Madeline’s contemporary.

  “Would you consider letting me look through the contents of that cabinet?” Emily asked quietly. “You may think it farfetched, but I believe we may learn something from the past that will help now.”

  Before his mother could answer, George Lawrence spoke firmly and without hesitation. “We will do anything that will help in any way to expose our daughter’s killer.”

  “Emily.” Will Stafford pressed her arm and indicated the people waiting behind them to speak to the Lawrences.

  “I can’t hold you any longer,” Emily said hastily. “May I call you tomorrow morning?”

  “Will has the number. He’ll give it to you.”

  The buffet table was in the dining room. Tables and chairs had been set on the enclosed back porch, which extended the length of the house.

  Plates in hand, they went out to the porch. “Over here, Will,” a voice called. “We’ve saved a place for you.”

  “That’s Natalie Frieze,” Will said as they walked across the room.

  “Join the other suspects,” Natalie said gaily when they reached the table. “We’re trying to get our stories straight before Duggan gives us the third degree.”

  Emily winced at the remark, agreeing with the stern-faced woman sitting opposite Natalie, who said sharply, “There are some things that ought not to be joked about, Natalie.”

  The reproof did not seem to faze Natalie Frieze for a moment. “‘Brighten the corner where you are,’ Rachel,” she quoted briskly. “That’s all I’m trying to do. No offense intended.”

  Dr. Wilcox was at the table and greeted her warmly. His wife, Rachel, was introduced, as were Bob and Natalie Frieze. A May and December romance, Emily thought. I wonder how long the lady will stay. That’s one marriage that I wouldn’t bet on lasting. On the other hand, you never know, she reminded herself. I certainly would have bet on mine hanging in for the long haul!

  “Have you found any of the books helpful?” Dr. Wilcox was asking.

  “Very much so.”

  “I understand you’re a criminal defense attorney, Emily,” Natalie Frieze said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I’ve been wondering—if someone in this room is indicted for Martha’s murder, would you consider defending him?”

  She likes to make waves, Emily thought, but she noticed that the atmosphere at the table changed instantly. Someone—or perhaps even everyone—is not finding that question amusing, she thought.

  She tried to pass off the question lightly. “Well, I am a member of the New Jersey bar, but since I’m sure that won’t happen, I don’t think I’ll look for a retainer here.”

  As they were leaving, Will introduced her to a number of people, most of them year-round or summer residents of the town. Emily immediately felt comfortable with them, as if, like many of the others, her family had retained a place in Spring Lake for generations. The Lawrence home went back to the 1880s. Had the Shapleys been guests in this house? she wondered.

  They chatted for a few minutes with John and Carolyn Taylor, Will’s close friends, who asked if she played tennis.

  A quick image of standing at Gary’s side, accepting the tennis doubles cup at their club in Albany, flashed through Emily’s mind. “Yes, I do.”

  “We’re members of the Bath and Tennis Club,” Carolyn Taylor said. “When it opens in May, join us for lunch there, and bring your racket.”

  “I’d like that.”

  In the general conversation she learned that Carolyn ran a nursery school in nearby Tinton Falls, while John was a surgeon in North Jersey Shore Hospital. She could tell immediately that they were people she would enjoy knowing better.

  As they were about to leave, Carolyn Taylor hesitated, then said, “I hope you realize that everyone in this room—make that everyone in this community—feels sorry that you’ve had so much on your plate these last few days. I just wanted to say that for all of us.”

  Then she added, “We’re fourth generation Spring Lake people. In fact, a distant cousin of mine, Phyllis Gates, wrot
e a book about life here in the 1880s and 1890s. She was very close to Madeline Shapley.”

  Emily stared at her. “I read her book cover-to-cover last night,” she said.

  “Phyllis died in the mid-1940s, when my mother was a teenager. Despite the age difference, they were very fond of each other. Phyllis used to take Mother on trips with her.”

  “Did she ever talk to your mother about Madeline?”

  “Yes, she did. In fact Mom and I were on the phone this morning. Naturally we’ve been discussing everything that has happened here these last few days. Mom said that Phyllis didn’t want to put it in her book, but she was always sure that it was Douglas Carter who killed Madeline. Wasn’t he the fiancé, or have I got that wrong?”

  thirty-two ________________

  TOMMY DUGGAN attended the Mass at St. Catherine’s with Pete Walsh. The entire time there he had been infuriated by the certainty that Martha’s killer was somewhere in the church, though his expression remained composed and suitably grave as he joined in the prayers being offered for her and raised his voice in the final hymn.

  We shall dwell in the City of God

  Where our tears shall be turned into dancing . . .

  When I find you, I’ll dry your crocodile tears for you, Tommy vowed, his mind on the murderer.

  Following the Mass, he had planned to go to his office and stay there until it was time to meet the group at Will Stafford’s house, but when he and Pete got back to the car and checked their messages, he learned about the death of Dr. Lillian Madden.

  Fifteen minutes later he was at the crime scene, with Pete at his heels. The body was still there, the forensic team efficiently at work, the local police guarding the scene.

  “They figure death occurred sometime between ten and eleven last night,” Frank Willette, the Belmar police chief told him. “It wasn’t a burglary that went sour, I’ll tell you that much. There’s jewelry and money in the bedroom, so whoever did this was only interested in finding something here, in her office.”