She laughed. “I couldn’t believe he dialed 9-1-1. That was absurd.”
I could see she was still intent on her apologies, so I headed her off. “Now that we’ve acknowledged the issue, let’s not go on trading apologies. Peace. Truce. All is forgiven,” I said. I held out the mailing pouch, which she accepted.
She studied the writing on the front and then ran a finger across the postmark. “Where’s it been all this time?”
I gave her a brief account of the twenty-eight-year delay. “That’s her friend Clara’s return address. She mailed the package for your mom.”
“Is this my mother’s handwriting or hers?”
“Your mother’s, I believe. I didn’t think to ask.”
“And Father Xavier was her parish priest?”
“He’s still at St. Elizabeth’s. I talked to him Saturday. Were you raised Catholic?”
“No, but Bill was and we intend to raise the baby Catholic.” She put her arms around the mailer and held it against her chest. “This is warm. Does it feel warm to you?”
I put a hand on the surface. “Not particularly,” I said. Since it was clear she wasn’t ready to explore the contents, I tried a change of subject. “What’s your due date?”
“A month. April twenty-ninth.”
“You know the gender?”
She smiled and shook her head. “We want to be surprised. Bill says most of life’s surprises aren’t that good.”
“How’s his practice going?”
“Great. He’s doing well.”
The exchange was curious in that we looked through the windshield more often than we looked at each other. In the past I’ve had similar conversations; the vehicle’s close quarters creates an intimacy you might not otherwise attain.
“Don’t you want to open that?”
She looked down. “I’m scared. What if I find something that hurts my heart?”
“No reason to assume the worst.”
“Do you know what’s in here?”
“I do. The mailer wasn’t sealed, so I thought it would be all right.”
“Tell me. Just so I’ll be prepared. Then I’ll look.”
“She wanted you to have the Bible she was given at her confirmation. There’s also a red-bead rosary and a Mother’s Day card you made for her.”
“I made her a card?”
“With your handprint. You must have been three. You have an April birthday, yes?”
“The twelfth.”
“She tucked in a card for your fourth.”
She took another look at the postmark. “You’re saying in late March, when she put this together, she knew what she was planning to do?”
I gave myself a moment to respond. This was treacherous territory. I wasn’t convinced Lenore had committed suicide, but I wasn’t going to sit there and suggest her father murdered her mother or drove her to kill herself. “It might have been equivalent to her making out a will. You do it for those you love. It doesn’t mean you expect to die anytime soon.”
She considered the idea. “You don’t think she was giving things away because she knew she wouldn’t be needing them?”
“I never met your mother, so I can’t answer that. It’s clear she loved you.”
“You really think so?”
“No doubt in my mind.”
“Why didn’t she ask for help?”
“She did, but I’m not sure anyone realized how much trouble she was in. People were worried, but not alarmed, if you can see the difference.”
“Like who?”
“Father Xavier was one. And Clara Doyle.”
“You talked to them?”
“A couple of days ago, yes. Clara mailed the package and Father Xavier held on to it, thinking one day you’d be in touch and he’d give it to you then. The mailer ended up in storage, and I guess people forgot it was there.”
“Why did my mom use Clara’s address and not her own?”
I was walking on eggshells here and I spoke with care. “I believe she was worried the mailer might be returned to the sender. Sometimes the post office does that for no apparent reason. She didn’t want it to show up at the house again.”
“Why?”
April was worse than a three-year-old. What was I supposed to say? I wanted to bang my head on the dashboard, but I managed to restrain myself. I understood her curiosity. There were things about my parents I’d never know and damn few people left to ask. “Possibly because your father wasn’t Catholic and she didn’t want him to know she was giving you items of religious significance. This is just a guess.”
“So you’re saying she did it behind his back?”
“You could look at it that way.”
“That doesn’t sound like a loving relationship.”
“Doesn’t to me, either, but marriages come in all shapes and sizes. Some work and some don’t.”
“How did you end up with this?”
“It’s a long story and really not that important.”
“It is to me.”
I was reluctant to go into it, but avoiding an explanation would only create more questions. “I came across it when I was going through the personal effects of a friend who died. He had this box of old files that should have gone to a shredding company years ago. I went through to see if there were documents I should pull before the contents were destroyed.”
“Did your friend know my mother?”
Despairingly, I said, “Honestly, April, I wasn’t prepared for all these questions. I expected to hand this over and let you make of it what you would.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to put you on the spot.”
“I don’t blame you for asking. I’m just trying to tell you why I’m doing such a poor job. Your dad’s the one you should talk to about this.”
“I can’t. He won’t talk about her. It upsets him. When I was a kid, I’d sometimes ask, but I learned it was better to keep quiet. There are issues I stay away from. Things that set him off. Certain holidays—Easter in particular. The subject of his mom. Mothers in general. Sometimes women in general.”
That was a topic I wanted to avoid myself lest I end up badmouthing the guy to his only child. On impulse, I said, “Did you ever meet a man named Peter Wolinsky?”
That caught her off guard. “He came to see me months ago. Is he the one who died?”
“He is. That was the end of August.”
“Oh, well now I feel bad. I liked him. He seemed like such a kind man.”
“He was kind.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was killed in a robbery attempt.”
“That is so sad. I used to run into him in the oddest places.”
“That’s because he was watching over you.”
She looked at me. “I can’t believe you said that. I remember thinking he was like my personal guardian angel, but I thought I was imagining it.”
“Well, you weren’t.”
“Why would he watch over me?”
“I know bits and pieces of the story. I don’t know everything. He felt protective.”
“Fair enough, I guess. So now I don’t understand what he was doing with the envelope.”
“Which puts us in the same boat. I’m piecing the sequence together the same way you are. Father Xavier gave it to him to pass along to you. Fate must have intervened and he died before he could deliver it.”
She was shaking her head. “Doesn’t it seem odd that this is suddenly filtering back to me? This package has been out there for twenty-eight years and now I’m holding it in my hands. It’s like this long-distance gift from my mother is finally reaching me, but why now? You think it’s about the baby?”
“Personally, I don’t believe in coincidence. Some occurrences are bound to be random. I wouldn’t make t
oo much of it.”
“Do you believe in ghosts? Because I do. Well, not ghosts, but spirits.”
I made a noncommittal sound.
“You don’t believe in ghosts?”
“I don’t know if I believe or not. There was one occasion when I was convinced there was a ‘presence,’ for lack of a better word, but my saying so doesn’t mean it’s true.”
In hopes of steering her off the subject, I introduced another one. “There’s something else in that package I should mention. Your mother included a photograph of your father when he was a little boy, sitting in his mother’s lap.”
“Frankie’s another subject we don’t talk about.”
“Ah, that’s right. You said mothers are off the list. Sounds like you and your dad are real close.”
“Actually, we were once upon a time. We traveled everywhere. We ate dinners out. Really nice places, too. He took me to Disneyland for my fourth birthday.”
I was temporarily distracted by the notion that he took her to an amusement park less than two weeks after her mother’s death. “Do you remember your mother at all?”
She shook her head. “I have no image of her. All I remember is feeling anxious. It was fine as long as I was distracted, but at night, or when I was sick, there was just this big yawning dark hole. I can’t tell you how many times I cried myself to sleep. Eventually, I got over it.”
“That’s not something you get over.”
“You can’t live in a place where there’s so much pain. You have to push it down and put a lid on it; otherwise you’d be overwhelmed.”
“Is that what you did?”
“What I did was grow up. We were living down here by then. I think he was hoping I’d never leave, that I’d always be Daddy’s little girl. I was just the opposite. I couldn’t wait to get away. The longest year of my life was between twelve and thirteen. I wanted to be a teenager. Like life would be totally different if I could only reach that age. Then it seemed like forever until I turned sixteen and got my driver’s license. When I graduated from high school, he assumed I’d go to UCST, and I was thinking, ‘Are you insane? I’m gone. I’m out of here.’ The fact is, I didn’t escape, did I? I’m here and he’s a hop, skip, and a jump away in Cottonwood, which is, what, all of six miles?”
“How do you get along with your stepmother?”
She made a face. “Not so great. She’s high-strung. I’m polite, but there’s nothing warm and fuzzy in our relationship.”
“How long have they been married?”
“Four years. He met her at an AA meeting. It was early on, when she first joined. I gather she was a bad drunk. Lost jobs, wrecked cars, binged with the best of them. She finally reached a point where she had to turn it around or die. He knew her all of three months before he proposed. The wedding was two weeks later.”
“Your father’s a member of Alcoholics Anonymous?”
She shook her head. “Briefly. I know it sounds cynical, but I think he was looking for a way to meet women. Celeste still goes to meetings a couple of times a week.”
“He waited a long time after your mother died.”
“No, no. There was Phyllis, the wife before Celeste.”
“Oh, sorry. That’s right. I remember hearing about her. What’s the story there?”
“He married her when I was seven. I guess she didn’t take to the role of mother substitute, so that only lasted a couple of years. A few years post-Phyllis, he dated a woman who worked at the same company. She was neat and he adored her. I liked her, too. He didn’t marry her, but she ended up suing him anyway, so it might as well have been a divorce. By then I was off at Pomona College and missed the fireworks.”
I’d have asked what the woman sued him for, but I knew we were talking about Taryn, so I let that slide as she went on.
“Essentially, if you count my mother on one end and Celeste on the other, that’s only four serious relationships in twenty-eight years. That’s, what, an average of one every seven years?”
“Not so bad when you put it that way.”
“We’ll see how long Celeste lasts. Not a lifetime, I can guarantee.”
“What’s their relationship like?”
“Very compatible. He’s a bully and she’s a mouse. They act like everything’s fine, but it’s not. We have them for dinner once a month, and that’s as much as I can tolerate. As a matter of fact, they’re coming up tomorrow night, so that’s one chore I can check off the list.”
“You think your relationship might change once the baby’s born?”
“Like we’d see them more often? I’m sure he’s hoping so, but I don’t.”
“I never know what to make of conversations like this,” I said. “I sometimes have this fantasy that life would be wonderful if only my mother and my father were alive. Then I hear stories like yours and I want to get down on my hands and knees and rejoice.”
She laughed. “I better get a move on. I need to get to the grocery store and I’m sure you have work to do.”
“Could I ask a quick favor? I’d like to write to Sacramento and request a copy of your mother’s death certificate, which means I’ll need her date of birth.”
“August 7, 1940.”
“What about a social security number?”
“She never had a job, as far as I know. She wasn’t even out of high school when I was born. Why do you want to see her death certificate?”
“In the interest of being thorough.”
“About what? She took an overdose. End of story, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know if it is or not. What if her death was accidental?”
“Oh. That never occurred to me. Good point. That would be amazing, wouldn’t it?”
“Seems like it’s worth looking into. I’m not sure I’ll learn anything, but I think I should make the effort.”
“You’ll let me know?”
“Of course.”
She leaned forward and turned the key in the ignition.
I opened the car door and then turned and looked at her. “You won’t tell your father you came to see me?”
“Oh, man. Not a word. He would blow.”
32
By the end of the workday, my alarm system was in and fully operational. Cullen taught me the basics and told me to come up with an arming and disarming code that didn’t consist of my address, a variation on my birthdate, or any string of numbers such as 1-2-3-4 or 0-0-0-0. He said I’d also need a one-word response code so if the alarm went off and the S.O.S. operator called, they’d know I was the one answering and not a burglar. I settled on Henry’s birthdate—February 14, 1900—which translated to 2-1-4-0 for the numerical code. My response code was “Ed.” I wrote Cullen a check and he handed me an instruction manual longer than the California Penal Code.
Once he left, I located a file that contained various forms published by the California Department of Public Health; in this case, I was looking for an application for a copy of a death record. I wasn’t entitled to a certified copy since I wasn’t related to her, wasn’t a member of law enforcement, had no court order, and had no power of attorney. Now that I had Lenore’s date of birth, I could request a Certified Informational Copy of her death certificate, which would be a duplicate, but printed with a legend on the face of it stating that it was “informational” and therefore could not be used as documentation to establish identity.
I hauled out my portable Smith Corona and set it up on my desk, then rolled in the blank form and filled out the section asking for my name, address, and phone. I typed in Lenore Redfern Lowe’s name, sex, city and county of death, date of birth, state of birth, and date of death, including her mother’s name and Ned Lowe’s name where indicated. In the heading for that portion of the form to be completed was the phrase “to the best of your knowledge,” which I hoped would cover any errors. When I wa
s finished, I made a copy of the form, wrote a check to cover the fee, and put the whole of it in an envelope addressed to the California Department of Public Health Vital Records in Sacramento. I applied the proper postage stamp and set it aside to drop in a mailbox on my way home.
Then I took out Pete’s list again and placed it on the desk. I’d been hoping to locate Susan Telford and Phyllis Joplin, the two women I hadn’t yet spoken with. Pete had also put Shirley Ann Kastle on the list, but I was willing to believe she was alive and well and living in the east. The other two I wasn’t so sure about. I started with Phyllis, Ned’s second wife, who apparently now lived in Perdido. The town itself is in the same area code as Santa Teresa, though not covered by our local phone book. I dialed directory assistance and asked the operator for a phone number for Phyllis Joplin. I didn’t expect to be successful and I was startled when the operator gave me the listing for a P. Joplin on Clementine. I made a note of the number and checked my crisscross to match the phone number with an address. I made a note of both as I tried the number.
A woman picked up and rattled off the name of a business, but she was too quick for me to catch what she was saying. I asked for Phyllis.
“You got her. Who’s this?”
I gave her my name and occupation and told her I was looking for information about Ned Lowe. “I know you were married to him at one time.”
The silence that followed was sharp and I thought she might hang up on me. Instead, she said, “What’s it to you? Are you a friend of his?”
“Not at all. I’m calling because your name appeared on a list put together by a detective named Pete Wolinsky. Did he contact you?”
Another brief silence, in which I imagined her weighing her words. “Why do you ask?”
“You’re aware that he was killed.”
“I read that in the paper. What about it?”
“We were colleagues. When he died he left unfinished business I’m hoping to settle. I wondered if you’d spoken with him.”
“He called once. I told him to leave me the hell alone. I thought he was a friend of Ned’s, or how would he even know who I was? Same goes for you.”