Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (42 page)

Adams told me what he had uncovered—all from his desk at the Sunpapers, using the phone, the Internet and the paper’s extensive archives. It was my turn to sit and listen, though unlike Vickie Waggoner I didn’t take it all in silence. A few “What?’s” and “Holy shit!’s” later and I hung up the phone. At almost the exact same time, I heard a scream from the basement. It was Vickie. The sound of feet running on stairs followed. A few seconds later, Aunt Billie came rushing into my office.

“Oh, Hitchcock! Come! Hurry!”

Do the math. When visibility is down to around a foot and the length of the hood of the car that you’re driving—in this case, a hearse—is around eight feet, that leaves a good seven feet of hood and tires and engine pretty much just hanging out there somewhere in front of you, out of sight. The headlights were doing me no good, simply reflecting back into my face off the fuzzy wall of snow that appeared to be moving along at exactly the same speed as the car. Which was slow. I was creeping along on faith, somewhere between twenty and thirty miles an hour on an expressway that welcomes sixty and tolerates seventy. At the speed I was traveling, the trip took me nearly an hour door-to-door, as opposed to the twenty minutes it would have taken normally. With great relief, I finally pulled to the curb and shut off the engine.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked Vickie, who was seated next to me. I leaned over and opened up the glove compartment and took out the pair of sunglasses Sam always keeps there.

“Yes.”

“No police?”

“That’s for later. I don’t want any third parties. Not for this.”

If the family was surprised to see me, they didn’t show it. Joan Bennett answered my knock and stepped aside to let me in. She threw a confused look at the woman in the sunglasses, then held out her hand to introduce herself.

“I’m Joan Bennett.”

The hand floated there, untaken.

Marcus Bennett was sitting on the steps leading upstairs, his chin was in his hands. He appeared to be pouting. Joan Bennett breezed by me and stopped at the foot of the stairs.

“Marcus, you remember Mr. Sewell from the other day? And this is …”

She was fishing for my companion’s identity. Her hook remained empty. “My friend,” was all I said. Joan Bennett’s mouth pinched in a little, then she led us into the living room. My glance went immediately to the table where only thirty-some hours previous had set a little silver pistol. It was gone now.

Ann and Daniel Kingman were seated together on the couch. Joan’s husband—I had no memory of his name—was in the chair beside the pistol-less table. He stood up as the three of us entered the room.

“Russell, this is Mr. Sewell. You remember him from Daddy’s funeral.” The woman didn’t even attempt a third shot at cadging Vickie’s name. I stepped over and shook hands with Russell Bennett. The man was roughly my age, though on a faster track to middle age. A receding hairline, some puffiness already around the too-tight Brooks Brothers shirt collar, the slight whiff of bay rum. He reminded me a little bit of one of those guys in the sports bar in Towson, now congenially going to seed.

Daniel Kingman had risen as well, though somewhat slower than his nephew-in-law. I turned to him and surprised everyone in the room I’m sure with the glare that I put on him, accompanied by the raised index finger and the unequivocal “or else” in the tone of my voice. “You keep quiet.”

He lowered back to the sofa. His eyes were wet and pleading. But if the obstetrician was cowed, his niece was another story.

“What is this all about? You can’t just storm in here and order my uncle around like that!”

I wasn’t looking at her, I was looking at Ann Kingman, who hadn’t said a word since I—correction, since
we
—had come into her home. Our eyes met for just an instant and then she turned to her daughter. “Sit down, Joan,” she snapped. “Or stand, I don’t care which. But keep quiet.”

Joan Bennett crossed her arms and scowled at me as she stepped across the room. For a moment I thought she was going for the desk. But she stopped at the windows, turned to face the room and leaned back against the windowsill. The floor was mine.

I took Vickie by the arm and led her over to a small chair against the wall by the living room entrance. The sunglasses masked her true expression. But I had a pretty good guess. I turned back to the others.

“I apologize for barging in like this. I know full well what a horrible time this is for the family.”

No one spoke. And then the ham began to rise up in me, I couldn’t help it. But also, I didn’t try to stop it. The alternative was pure anger, and I really didn’t want to start breaking things. I stepped into the middle of the floor, and clasped my hands behind my back like an old-fashioned schoolteacher in an old-fashioned movie. God help me, I even rocked on my heels.

“So. Who here would like to take responsibility for the murder of Helen Waggoner?”

Silence. No show of hands. No big surprise there. I turned to Russell Bennett.

“Would you care to take responsibility, Russ?”

The man gave me an understandably contorted look. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’ll take that as a no,” I said. I whipped around to face the couple on the couch. Two more guilty-looking visages—one angry, one depleted—I could not imagine.

“Ann? May I still call you Ann?”

“That is completely up to you.”

“Ann. When your brother-in-law came to you several months ago with his gossip about your husband’s most recent … misadventure, what was your first reaction? Your first thought.”

“I don’t recall,” she said flatly.

“Was it that you wanted to strangle your husband’s neck? After all the years and all of your forbearance, and here he was planning to have a child with his new, young chippy? Didn’t that make you want to tear his eyes out?”

“The thought did cross my mind.”

“Or maybe even shoot him with that little pistol of yours?”

“I lied to you,” she said, smiling grimly. “I’ve never shot that gun.”

“Did you think about it then?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Well, how about the girlfriend then? What about her? Did it cross your mind to take out some revenge on her? You couldn’t have been too thrilled about this little development in your husband’s life, could you?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Helen Waggoner. Your brother-in-law did give you the name, am I right?”

“Yes, he did.”

“And did you pass it on to your son?”

“Why don’t you come to the point?”

“I plan to. I’m coming to it. Now, you and I know that Jeffrey tracked down Helen where she worked and tried to dissuade her from this whole business, don’t we? What did he tell you after he got back?”

“Nothing, really. Jeffrey told me that he had had a big fight with her, and that he thought she was cheap trash through and through. I told him that that didn’t surprise me in the slightest. If you knew Richard—”

“Mother!”

Joan Bennett pushed away from the windowsill, then immediately sank back onto it. I kept my focus on Ann Kingman.

“Let me just ask you right out, Ann. Did you have anything to do with Helen’s murder?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you didn’t.”

She didn’t thank me. I hadn’t expected her to. I shifted my attention to Daniel Kingman.

“You told me in your office yesterday that your brother had been … the word you used was ‘prolific.’ You suggested that over the years he has sent quite a number of women to you to ‘take care of.’ Any idea how many women that would be?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“Is that because you don’t remember, or because you don’t want to.”

“Do we have to go into this?”

“Fine. Do you remember a time fairly long ago? I don’t know, I think we’re going back twenty-some odd years? Twenty-five, twenty-six? Do you recall helping your brother out way back then? Do you know what I’m talking about here, Dr. Kingman?”

“Yes.”

“Help me out then. Was this the first time your brother had come to you for this kind of help? Or was it just the first time since he had been married?”

“What difference does it make?”

“You’re right. I guess it doesn’t. So now, what did you do? Did you do your big brother’s bidding like a good boy?”

“You don’t have to be snide,” Ann Kingman snapped. “Stop dragging this out. You have something to say, then say it.”

“Did you?” I asked again.

The obstetrician’s voice was barely above a whisper. “No.”

“What happened?”

He looked around at the others in the room, as if one of them might be able to bail him out. But no one could. And he knew it. He let out a difficult sigh.

“The woman changed her mind,” he said. “She wanted to keep the baby. She promised me that she would not bother Richard about it at all. The two of them were finished anyway. She was smart enough to know that. She was … she was a shrewd woman. You didn’t know Richard, Mr. Sewell. My brother thought he was the noblest thing on Earth in even sending these women off to me to ‘help them out.’ As far as he was concerned he owed them nothing.”

“But in this case?”

“She wanted to keep the baby. She made me promise not to tell him.”

“Your little secret, eh? Something you could secretly hold over your brother?” He didn’t respond. “So what happened?”

“She came to term, and she delivered a healthy baby. I delivered it for her.”

Ann Kingman stiffened. This was news to her.

“And you never told your brother?”

“As you said, it was my little secret. My pathetic little secret. For what it was worth. No. I never mentioned it to Richard. Not until last summer.”

“What happened last summer?”

Kingman made a silent appeal to the woman seated next to him, but she was refusing to look at him. Kingman spoke to his hands, “Richard ran into the child’s mother. It was purely by chance. She was sick. She was in the hospital. At Hopkins. She had cancer.”

“And what was the woman’s name, Dr. Kingman.”

He looked over at the woman in the sunglasses. Vickie remained stone still. The obstetrician sighed, then answered.

“Ruth Waggoner.”

I asked, “What did your brother tell you?”

“He told me that he had come across this woman at Hopkins. He saw her name on the door of her room. At first he didn’t go in and see her. But the next day he saw a young woman coming out of her room. It was … it was the young woman who got killed.”

“Helen.”

“Yes. Her.”

“And what happened next?”

“Richard went in and spoke with the woman. With Ruth. He told her who he was. She was terribly ill. He could see that she was dying. He asked her who was the young woman who had just been in her room. She said it was her daughter. Helen. And then she told him … that she was his daughter too.”

Were I to claim that the room fell so silent that we could hear the snow falling outside, I’d be exaggerating. But not by much. Nobody spoke or moved. And then Russell Bennett blurted out, “What the hell are you saying? Richard had an affair with his own
daughter
? Jesus Christ!”

Bennett’s outburst loosened the room. Joan Bennett turned her back on the rest of us and stared out the window at the snow, one hand half covering her mouth. Ann Kingman’s glower traveled calmly about the room, resting on the man on the couch next to her. Daniel Kingman withered under her glare. It was clear that he had never shared this secret with her. I well imagined that Kingman hadn’t shared it with anyone. I stepped over to Vickie and touched her on the shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded, but didn’t dare to speak. I turned back around and addressed Russell Bennett. The look of disgust was still on his face.

“Kingman didn’t have an affair with Helen. That was what everyone assumed, of course, given his history. Your father-in-law was a slummer. According to what the good doctor here told me in his office, Richard Kingman went for women who he felt were well beneath him, who he could easily discard. What his own son referred to as ‘pure trash.’ If he got them into trouble, he sent them off to his brother.”

Ann Kingman muttered something. I missed what it was, but it was obvious from the look on Daniel Kingman’s face that he had heard it. Loud and clear.

I continued, “Something apparently struck a chord though when Richard ran back into Ruth Waggoner last summer. Who knows? Maybe it was actual pity, seeing the horrible way that her life was ending. Maybe the two talked out a lot of things, we’ll never know. One thing does seem certain, it appears that the news that he had a daughter … another daughter … it appears that the news got to him. What was it he said to you about that, Dr. Kingman? Did your brother suddenly get sentimental after all these years? Was he glad to discover that he had a daughter he had never known about?”

The doctor looked up from his balled fist. His mouth opened. But he said nothing. I pressed, “Go on. Tell us. Did Richard rush to you and thank you profusely for what you did? Was he overjoyed that you had tricked him like that? That you had lied to him and then kept it from him all those years that he had another child out there somewhere?”

“Of course not,” Kingman said softly.

“I’ll bet ‘of course not.’ I’ll bet the bastard pitched a bloody fit.”

“Accurate,” was all that the man on the couch could say.

“Okay then. So, did your brother contact Helen?” I asked. “Or did Ruth finally let her daughter in on this piece of information that she’d been holding back all these years?” I stole a glance at Vickie, who was remaining mute and stoic behind her sunglasses.

Kingman shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

“Well, whichever it was, they got in contact. However it shook down, the point is that Richard Kingman decided to take care of Helen. He became the ultimate sugar daddy. He bought her new clothes, things for her son, an old MG that she had seen on sale. It’s amazing what guilt will do.” I took a step toward the couch. “Isn’t it, Doctor?”

For a fraction of a second, a look of anger flashed across Daniel Kingman’s face. As quickly as it appeared, it vanished.

“You lied to me in your office yesterday. Richard didn’t pretend to you that he was having an affair with Helen, did he? That’s too perverse, even for Richard. When he brought her in to see you, you knew exactly who she was. You knew this wasn’t his lover he was asking you to take care of. Why did you come up with the story that Richard was planning to run off with this woman? That’s what you told Ann, isn’t it? You pretended with me that you were ‘protecting’ Ann from this horrible truth. But the fact is, you came up with that horrible
lie
yourself and fed it to her. What I don’t understand is why? What did you possibly think would happen? If Ann were to confront her husband about this ‘affair,’ the truth would surely come out, right? And along with it, so would your part in all of this. I don’t get it.”