The Christening Day Murder

“Hello,” I called. “Anyone there?”

In answer, I heard a metallic clatter, as though someone were gathering up tools, and then the footsteps of someone running.

“Who’s there?” I called. But the footsteps were already hurriedly mounting the stairs at the far end of the hall. I kept walking. I passed another doorway, probably the furnace room. I raised my flashlight and saw the stone stairs along the far wall. Lowering the beam, I spotted something on the floor near the interior wall that supported the stairs. It looked like one of the rectangular stones that formed the walls down here. I wondered if it had become loose from thirty years underwater.

But it didn’t appear that way. There were chunks of mortar on the ground around the stone, as though someone had just dug it out. When I had nearly reached it, my light caught something gold on the floor. I picked it up and pocketed it. Then I sat on my heels and pointed the flashlight into the opening under the stairs.

I drew in my breath and said, “Oh, no,” and at the same moment I crossed myself.

Inside the exposed opening, dirty and fleshless, was all that remained of a body that had been underwater for three decades.

THE GOOD FRIDAY MURDER

THE YOM KIPPUR MURDER

THE CHRISTENING DAY MURDER

THE ST. PATRICK’S DAY MURDER

THE CHRISTMAS NIGHT MURDER

THE THANKSGIVING DAY MURDER

THE PASSOVER MURDER

THE VALENTINE’S DAY MURDER

THE NEW YEAR’S EVE MURDER

THE LABOR DAY MURDER

THE FATHER’S DAY MURDER

THE MOTHER’S DAY MURDER

THE APRIL FOOLS’ DAY MURDER

THE HAPPY BIRTHDAY MURDER

The author wishes to thank
Ana M. Soler and James L. V. Wegman
for their invaluable help.

It began with a phone call out of the blue, a voice I hadn’t heard for many months. The phone rang as I was clearing up my dinner dishes. I grabbed a towel, rubbing my fingers on it as I went.

“Kix?” a somewhat breathless voice said in my ear.

I smiled at the name. People who call me Kix knew me when I was a kid or else were fellow nuns at St. Stephen’s. Everyone else calls me Chris. The breathlessness had given her away. “Maddie? Is that you?”

“It is and I’ve done it. I’m a mother!” She sounded as though she’d just won an Olympic gold. “It’s wonderful,” my friend said. “He’s big and beautiful and healthy and his name is Richard—we’re calling him Richie. This is better than when we switched the midterms in Miss Ames’s English class and she nearly suspended me.”

“Oh, Maddie, congratulations. That’s wonderful.” I was laughing now, seeing the skinny, giggly girl she used to be, with lots of hair and lots of trouble up her sleeve.

“Look, I know I haven’t called for months, but I’ve really dedicated myself to getting through this pregnancy.”

As she spoke, I recalled her problems of years past, the difficulty conceiving, then later miscarrying. There had been a letter that had frightened me because of its downbeat tone and almost garbled handwriting.

“It’s OK,” I said. “I’ve been remiss myself.”

“I see you got away,” my very upbeat friend said. “You’re out now, aren’t you?”

“Yes. I left the order last June.”

“They told me. I knew it was in the works, but I didn’t know it had happened. Are you living with your aunt?”

“She died, Maddie. I’m living in the house she left me.”

“Oh. Gee, I’m sorry. It must have been tough for you. Kix,” she said, and her voice picked up again, “I’m calling to invite you to the christening.”

“I’d love to come,” I said, delighted at the invitation. “Let me get a pencil.”

“We’re not having it in the local church, Kix. We’re doing it in upstate New York, about a hundred fifty miles or so from you. If you don’t have a car, we can—”

“I have one and I’d love to make the trip. What’s the name of the town?”

“Studsburg. I’ll send you directions. It’s a little spooky. Do you mind spooky things?”

“Not if you’re there to hold my hand.” Listening to the excited voice had raised my own blood pressure a notch and given me a giddy edge. “Does your mother live there now?”

“Nobody lives there. Nobody’s lived there for thirty years. Studsburg doesn’t really exist anymore.” I must have been quiet for too long, because she said, “Are you still with me?”

“I’m here, but I think I lost you.”

“I’m thirty, right?”

“Right.”

“We’re both thirty. I was born in Studsburg, and I was the last baby christened in St. Mary Immaculate Church there. The day after my christening, Studsburg was emptied and the Army Corps of Engineers flooded it for a reservoir.”

“You mean the whole town is underwater?” I was starting to wonder if Maddie had all her marbles.

“It was for thirty years, but then the drought came.”

“I know. l’ve been saving dishwater to water my plants.”

“Well, it’s much worse in upstate New York. It’s so bad, the town came back.”

I felt a chill. “You mean the whole reservoir dried up?”

“Just as if someone had pulled the plug in a bathtub. You can walk in it without getting your feet wet.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “But what could be left after so long a time underwater?”

“I haven’t seen it yet myself,” Maddie said, “but from what I hear from my cousins and Grandmother Stifter, there are a lot of foundations of houses, parts of some streets, a couple of bridges, and one perfectly beautiful St. Mary Immaculate Church.”

The chill deepened. “That’s remarkable.”

“Minus its windows, of course. Mom said they were taken out before the flooding because they were very valuable. And of course, the pews were removed. My mother still has one in her living room. But the whole stone exterior is pretty much intact. We heard the steeple was the first thing that showed when the water level went down. Now there isn’t any more than a few puddles, and tourists pour in every weekend to take pictures.”

“Absolutely amazing,” I said for at least the second time. “And you were the last baby to be baptized there.”

“And Richie will be the next. My mother truly believes it’s a miracle.”

“Maddie, you couldn’t keep me away from that christening.”

“I’m glad to hear it. And Kix …” She paused. “You sound really terrific. Loose, you know?”

I smiled. “I’m doing fine.”

“I know you thought a lot about leaving the convent, but did you go because … I mean, is there someone in your life?”

“I didn’t leave for a man,” I said, not answering the second part of her question. “It was what I told you, a matter of conscience. I thought about it for a couple of years.”

“What are you doing with yourself?”

“A little teaching, a little volunteer work, a little gardening. I’m really enjoying myself.”

“We’ll have to talk. I’ll mail you the directions to Studs
burg and I’ll put you up with one of my cousins who lives nearby.”

“Don’t do that, Maddie. I’d prefer a motel room. I’ll make it a vacation weekend. I’m really looking forward to it.”

“Great. Good talking to you.”

I felt wonderfully elated after hanging up. I could remember skinny little Maddie Stifler as though we were still in Miss Ames’s English class. Maddie had been fun and trouble in equal parts, and I guess something in me envied her casual, disruptive behavior and easy style of friendship. What had drawn us to each other, I had no idea. I knew her during the unhappiest years of my life, through my mother’s illness and death, and then the year I lived with my aunt and uncle and their retarded son, Gene, my cousin, who now lived in a group home not far from Oakwood. There were times when Maddie’s behavior went beyond shocking me, but at the worst of times, she could always make me giggle. I had never met anyone who had threatened so often and so sincerely to run away from home, to get away from
that woman
who was her mother. All I had wanted was for my own mother to survive her illness, to live another day, to be with me when I needed her.

But Maddie had grown up as we all had, and in doing so she had calmed down, married Frank Clark, suffered her own sadness and disruption, and reconciled happily with her mother. And in two weeks we would celebrate the happiest of the seven sacraments, the baptism of her son.

When I had finished the dishes, I went upstairs to the room I still thought of as my aunt’s sewing room. Aunt Margaret had been a notorious pack rat, and although I had lived in the house I inherited from her for many months, I had been reluctant to throw out all the fruits of her labor. In a box marked
MAPS
, I found at least twenty, some of them dating back to early in her marriage.

She and Uncle Will had obviously saved every map from every trip they ever took. Because traveling with Gene was difficult, most of their trips had been by car, and there were
road maps dating back to the fifties. Most of them were the kind you used to get free from gas stations, and sure enough, there was one for New York State from more than thirty years ago.

I looked up Studsburg in the alphabetical listing of cities and towns, and traced over and up to the square where the letter along the side and the number along the bottom met. The little dot was south and west of Ithaca and north and west of Binghamton, Elmira, and Corning. It was on a little gray line that was listed as “other roads” on the legend. I suspected it hadn’t improved much in thirty years, especially with the demise of Studsburg.

Not far to the south was the Pennsylvania border, and a few towns with familiar names roughly encircled Studsburg. Painted Post, Olean, and Hornell were some of them. Watkins Glen wasn’t all that far away to the northeast; I might make a stopover on my way home.