X

  She looked up with a quick smile. “May I help you?”

  “I’m hoping you have copies of the Haines and Poke Directories going back thirty years. I’m researching someone who lived here in the late fifties, early sixties.”

  “We have directories starting in 1910. Genealogy?”

  “Not quite. Something similar.”

  “Telephone books should help,” she said. “We have newspapers on microfiche, and you might take a look at voter registration records, which are available at city hall.”

  “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. This is my first run at the project, so we’ll see what kind of luck I have.”

  She showed me to the reference section, where an entire wall of shelves was devoted to city directories, old phone books, and historical accounts of the settling of the area. “Let me know if I can be of any further assistance,” she said, and left me to my work.

  I found both the Haines and the Polk from the years that interested me—1959, 1960, and 1961—along with the telephone books for those same years. I also picked up the current year’s editions of the Haines and Polk so that I could trace information forward. I was hoping to find someone who’d been acquainted with Ned and Lenore during the period before her death. For sleuthing purposes, gossip is like freshly minted coin. If I could find someone at a given address who’d been in residence in 1961, I might strike it rich.

  I sat down at an empty table and spread my books across the surface. I started with the 1961 Haines and worked my way through the alphabetical street listings until I reached Glenrock Road. Then I followed the house numbers from 101 as far as the 400s. The occupants at 461 were Elmer and Clara Doyle. Elmer owned a carpet-cleaning business. Clara was a homemaker. I flipped over to the 1961 Polk Directory and found the Doyles listed by last name, with the same address and a telephone number, which I made note of. I turned back to the Haines and jotted down the names of the neighbors on either side of the Doyles, Troy and Ruth Salem at 459 and John and Tivoli Lafayette at 465. I tried those same names in the current telephone book and found Clara Doyle, a widow, listed, still at 461. There was no sign of the Salems or the Lafayettes.

  Out of curiosity, I returned to the shelves and pulled the Haines and the Polk for 1952, the year Lenore Redfern was “confirmed to Christ.” There were four Redfern families. The listing that sparked my interest was for Lew and Marcella at 475 Glenrock, a few doors away from the Doyles.

  I had no idea how or why the Doyles, husband or wife, had sent the mailing pouch to Father Xavier, but I was hoping Clara could enlighten me. In the 1961 Polk, under the last name Lowe, I found Ned and Lenore Lowe at 1507 Third Street. From April’s wedding announcement, I knew that Ned and his current wife, Celeste, lived in Cottonwood, six miles to the south of Santa Teresa. The 1961 Haines confirmed Ned Lowe’s name and indicated he worked in sales and his wife, Lenore, was a homemaker. I wrote down the names of nearby neighbors: the Wilsons, the Chandlers, and the Schultzes. Taryn Sizemore had told me Ned attended Burning Oaks High School, which might be another source of information.

  My final search was for the last name Kastle, in hopes of tracking down Shirley Ann’s parents. The only Kastles I found were Norma and Boyd on Trend. I went through the current Polk and the Haines, along with the current telephone book, and came up empty-handed. Oh, well. It was probably unrealistic to expect to score in every single category. I returned the volumes to the shelves, sent the librarian a friendly wave, and went out to my car.

  23

  Clara Doyle lived in a boxy one-story white frame house with a pitched roof and a row of windows that glassed in the original porch. From the street, it was hard to imagine an interior large enough to accommodate much more than a living room, an eat-in kitchen, one bedroom, and a bathroom. Enclosing the porch had probably added a much-needed hundred and fifty square feet of space. There were two very tall palm trees in the yard, each growing from the center of a circle of white rocks. Green fronds formed feather dusters at the top, while shaggy brown fronds hung down along the trunk almost to the ground. In Santa Teresa, Norway rats will shelter in the crevices if city maintenance crews let too much time pass between trims.

  There was no doorbell in evidence. Through the glass in the upper half of the door, I could see a woman sitting at a table in the front room, working on a jigsaw puzzle. I tapped on the glass, hoping I wouldn’t startle her. When she caught sight of me, she pushed her chair back and got up. She was tall and stout, with a round face, thin white hair, and glasses with oversize red plastic frames that made her eyes look enormous. She wore a pink cotton floral-print housedress with a pinafore-style apron over it. She opened the door without hesitation, saying, “Yes?”

  I couldn’t believe she was so trusting. How did she know I wouldn’t burst in, smite her about the head and shoulders, and take all her cash? “Are you Clara Doyle?”

  “I am, and who might you be?” She had a sturdy set of yellowing teeth, darkly discolored at the gum line, but otherwise looking like the set she was born with.

  I handed her a business card. “Kinsey Millhone. I drove up from Santa Teresa this morning hoping you might give me information about Lenore Redfern. Her family lived down the street at 475—”

  “I know where the Redferns lived, but they’ve been gone for years,” she said. She slid my card into her apron pocket. “Why have you come to my door?”

  “Because of this.” I held up the mailing pouch, the face of it turned toward her, as though I meant to read her a story, pointing to the pictures as I went along. “Do you recognize it?”

  “Of course. Why do you have it when it was mailed to someone else?”

  “A colleague drove up from Santa Teresa a year ago. I believe he met with Father Xavier.”

  “You’re referring to Mr. Wolinsky, the private detective.”

  “You met Pete?”

  “He came to me with questions about Lennie and her husband, Ned. I advised him to talk to our parish priest.”

  “How did he know you were acquainted with Lenore?”

  “He had the Redferns’ old address and started knocking on doors. All of the neighbors from the old days have died or moved on except me. He said our conversation was confidential, so I’m not entirely clear why he told you.”

  “He didn’t. I came across the mailer among his personal effects.” I could see her fix on the word “effects.”

  “He passed?”

  “In August.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear of it. He was a very nice man.”

  “I’m trying to find out what brought him to Burning Oaks in the first place. Did he say anything about that?”

  “I’m still not clear what this has to do with you.”

  “Sorry. I should have explained myself. Pete’s widow is a good friend. She asked me to help settle his business affairs. I was hoping to deliver this to April, but I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing. I came to you first because yours was the return address.”

  She thought about that briefly. “You’d best come in.”

  She held open the door and I stepped into the glassed-in front room. She closed the door behind me and returned to the jigsaw puzzle.

  The tabletop was a large sheet of plywood, probably forty-eight inches on a side, resting on two sawhorses. Chairs had been placed around the partially completed puzzle so that several people could work at the same time. The light pouring in through the front windows brought the haphazard arrangement of puzzle pieces into sharp relief. She was apparently a purist, because there was no sign of the box top with the finished picture in view. The portion she’d pieced together was in tones of black and white. When I saw the subject matter, I leaned forward and looked more carefully.

  The figures were small; a cartoonlike assortment of medieval peasants in a landscape rendered in minute detail. There were weapons everywhere—spears and crossbows and sword
s. Also, lizards and strange birds. Naked men and women were being variously whipped and beaten, pecked, and cut in half with a giant knife. All of the edge pieces were in place and she’d completed certain areas along the left-hand side, including a naked fellow, impaled on a stick, being roasted over an open fire.

  “I hope you don’t mind if I work while we talk. My great-grandchildren will be here after school and I promised I’d get this started. Their patience is limited.”

  “May I?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  I pulled out a chair and sat down, putting the mailing pouch on the floor at my feet. I was transfixed by the horrors in the jigsaw puzzle. “What is this?”

  “I’m teaching them about the Seven Deadly Sins. The two older ones are too busy to visit, so I’m having to focus on the little ones. Kindergarten through third. I started with an explanation of Gluttony and Sloth. They had no idea what I was talking about and couldn’t have cared less even when I explained. Then I found these puzzles, and now they can’t wait to help.”

  “What am I looking at?”

  “Pieter Bruegel the Elder did a series of engravings with the Seven Deadly Sins as his subject. This one is Anger. You can talk about Greed or Pride being wrong, but it doesn’t mean much to children. Eternal damnation’s an abstract, so what do they care? On the other hand, they know about tantrums and school yard fights, with all the scratching, biting, and kicking that accompanies them. They also have a keen understanding of punishment. This is a hell they can see with their own eyes. You’d be surprised how much fun we have.”

  She was searching for a particular piece, so I held my tongue. “Where are you, you little dickens?” she murmured to herself.

  I stole a quick look at my surroundings, which included the living room and a portion of the kitchen. The furniture was the sort I’ve seen at Goodwill donation centers: serviceable and well-used. No antiques and no pieces that would even qualify as “collectible,” except for the oven, which was a four-burner O’Keefe and Merritt with a center griddle, a fold-down shelf, drop-in salt and pepper shakers, and a clock that displayed the correct time. Henry would have given an arm and a leg for it.

  Idly, she said, “I’m sorry to hear about Mr. Wolinsky. Was he ill?”

  “He was killed in a robbery attempt,” I said, without going into any detail. “He went to some lengths to hide the mailer, so he must have been worried about its falling into the wrong hands. Do you have any idea why Father Xavier gave it to him?”

  “Mr. Wolinsky told me April was living in Santa Teresa. I’d imagine he told Father Xavier the same thing. He saw her wedding announcement in the paper and that’s what set him thinking.” She picked up a puzzle piece and pressed it into place. “Gotcha. Hah! I haven’t laid eyes on that package in years. I expect Father Xavier asked him to deliver it.”

  “How well did you know Lenore?”

  “Her family attended St. Elizabeth’s the same as we did. I sat for Lenore when she was just a tiny little thing. I called her Lennie, but I might have been the only one who did. Once she married Ned, I looked after April if she was having a bad time of it. I raised six babies of my own and I know how rough it can be.”

  “May I ask why she used your return address instead of her own?”

  “She worried the package might be sent back. She didn’t want Ned to know she’d sent the keepsakes to Father Xavier.”

  “Why?”

  “He wasn’t a Catholic. I’m sure she didn’t trust him to pass along the Bible and the rosary. Sometimes he got in a rage and destroyed things.”

  “Was that often?”

  “More so as time went on. He had no patience with her. She was subject to low days. Migraine headaches, no energy, poor appetite. She had a nervous disposition and it was clear she needed help. By then, my children were grown and I missed having little ones underfoot. Ned was often on the road, so it fell to her to take care of everything. When he was home, she had to be Johnny-on-the-spot. He’d snap his fingers and she was supposed to hop to.”

  “You think she was suffering postpartum depression?”

  “‘Baby blues’ they called it back then, though that was a personal matter and not something anybody talked about. Lennie would sink into black moods. These days, you read about women killing their own kids, but I don’t believe she ever thought about hurting April. Ned claimed she threatened to, but I never believed a word of it. He’d be all down in the mouth, talking about how worried he was, asking my advice, but it was all done for effect.”

  I studied her, wondering how much she might be willing to confide. I picked up a puzzle piece shaped like a one-armed ghost and tried to find a home for it. “Was there a question about how she died? I was told she killed herself.”

  “She was a Catholic. Devout. Suicide’s a mortal sin. If she’d killed herself, she’d be condemning her own soul to Hell.”

  “So you don’t believe she’d do such a thing.”

  “No, I do not.”

  “What if she were in unbearable emotional pain?”

  “She had Father Xavier and she had her faith. She also had me.”

  I tried placing the piece near the left-hand edge and I was startled when it popped into place. “What time of year was it?”

  “Spring, which is another reason suicide made no sense. Her favorite holiday was Easter, which fell on April second that year. She passed on Good Friday, two days before. That week, we dyed Easter eggs together and hid them on the church grounds for the children’s Easter egg hunt. We were set to bake cookies and we’d been looking at recipes. She wanted to do bunny shapes with pink and blue icing. Ned hated anything to do with the holiday, but she ignored him and did as she pleased for once.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Valium. An overdose.”

  “How much Valium do you have to take before you overdose?”

  “Ned said she mixed it with vodka.”

  “Valium is a prescription drug. Why would a doctor write her a script, given the state she was in?”

  “A goodly number of housewives took Valium in those days. They referred to it as Vitamin V. If you complained about anything, Valium was the cure. Her family doctor actually suggested it.”

  “Did she leave a note?”

  Clara shook her head.

  “Doesn’t her sending those items to Father Xavier suggest suicide was on her mind?”

  “It might have been on her mind, but I don’t believe she would have done such a thing. She was frightened.”

  “Of what?”

  “Ned, obviously.”

  “It may seem obvious now, but it must not have seemed obvious back then or the police would have investigated her death as a homicide.”

  “That’s not necessarily the case. He was clever. The chief of police was a friend of his. Ned cultivated friendships with many of the officers and he was generous with his donations to their foundation. He laid the groundwork, confiding in everyone how distressed he was about her mental illness.”

  “Personal relationships aren’t relevant. I don’t care how clever or charming Ned was in those days. The pathologist’s opinion would have been based on autopsy results, not schmoozing with him.”

  “I’m not saying he did anything, so I should refrain from comment. To do otherwise is unchristian.”

  “Don’t hesitate on my account. I don’t even go to church.”

  “For shame,” she said mildly, still surveying the loose pieces for another fit.

  “Was she unhappy?”

  “Of course. Divorce was impossible for the same reason suicide was. Marriage is a sacrament. Lennie’s mother was furious she’d gotten pregnant to begin with and scandalized when she talked about leaving him.”

  “Really? She told her mother she was leaving him?”

  “She hinted at it. There’d never be
en a divorce in the family, and Marcella said Lenore was not going to be the first.”

  “Did Ned know she talked about leaving him?”

  “If he did, Marcella’s the one who told him. She was crazy about Ned. He played up to her. He was downright flirtatious, for lack of a better word. I could see what he was doing, but Marcella would brook no criticism, and it wasn’t my place to interfere.”

  “Just a stab in the dark here, but didn’t Lenore get pregnant because of the Church’s stance on birth control?”

  “She got pregnant because she was naive and inexperienced. Ned told her it wasn’t that easy. I’m sure he’d have said anything to get what he wanted from her. By the time I set her straight, it was too late.”

  “What about Ned? Was he unhappy in the marriage as well?”

  “If so, I’m the last person he would have told.”

  “Do you believe he killed her?”

  “You asked me that once.”

  “I’m just wondering if he had reason to get rid of her.”

  “I don’t know why a man like that does anything. I said the same thing to Mr. Wolinsky. All I’m offering is my opinion.”

  “Fair enough. Let’s put it another way. Did other people believe he killed her?”

  “I don’t know what other people believed. I heard talk, which I won’t repeat because it’s not my place.”

  “Are Lenore’s parents still alive?”

  “Oh my stars, no. Marcella died of cancer in 1976; her husband a year later of a heart attack.”

  “So there’s no family left?”

  “Two sisters, but they both married and moved away. This was some time after she died. The family was devastated. I don’t know where either girl ended up. Father Xavier might know.”