The Christening Day Murder (14 page)

The house was still standing, which gave me an additional lift. It was about the size of the one I own, on a nice piece of property with an old car sitting in the driveway. The mailbox at the curb had the name Thurston painted on it. When I rang the bell, a woman in her sixties answered.

I introduced myself, and she acknowledged she was Mrs. Thurston. “I’m trying to track down a young woman who may have roomed here a long time ago.” I saw her eyes brighten and her face look expectant. “Her name was Candida Phillips.”

“Candy!” she said excitedly. “Come on in. Do you know where Candy is?”

Whoopee! Fireworks went off inside me. “I’m afraid not,” I said, trying to keep my own excitement in check.

“She most certainly did live here, and when she left, she promised to keep in touch, but we never heard from her again.”

I followed her into a bright, shiny kitchen, and we sat at the table. This was obviously a person who had known and liked Candy Phillips, and I decided to go with my instincts and take her into my confidence.

“Mrs. Thurston, I just learned Candy’s name a couple of hours ago, and I’m trying to find out as much as I can about her. The only information I have is that she taught school in Studsburg in the year before the town was flooded and that she lived here sometime during that year—”

“The whole year,” she interrupted.

“Then you knew her well.”

“Oh yes, real well. We just loved Candy.”

“I’m not sure,” I said hesitantly, reluctant to burst her balloon, “but I think the body they found in the Studsburg church may have been hers.”

“Oh no.” She clapped a hand over her mouth and looked at me with frightened eyes. “I knew something was wrong when she didn’t come back that last night. Who could ever have wanted to kill Candy?” she said, dropping her hand and reaching for a tissue. “She was the dearest person you can imagine.”

“I don’t know. But I want to find out.”

“Would you mind if I called my daughter?”

“Of course not.”

“She knew Candy better than anyone.” She dialed a number and, without any introduction, began to explain that a woman was here asking about Candy Phillips. “Well, drop everything,” she said. Then she hung up. “It won’t take her a minute. Monica waited so long to hear from her. She just couldn’t believe Candy would leave and forget us.”

As she stopped speaking, I could hear the front door open and a woman’s voice called, “Hello? I’m here.”

Her name was Monica Anderson, and she was the youngest
person I’d met since starting the investigation. She must have been about forty.

“Of course I remember Candy,” she said. “She was the brightest light of that awful year. My dad died, and Mom had to rent out a room to make ends meet, and she was sure she was going to get a thief who had loud parties and dropped her clothes all over the house, and then Candy came and she was like a gift to us.”

“I really needed the money,” Mrs. Thurston said, “but after a few months, I would have let her stay on for nothing just to have her around.” She turned to Monica. “This lady thinks Candy may be the body they found in that old church.”

“Oh, no, not Candy,” the daughter said, her face resembling her mother’s as she had heard my suspicion.

“Tell me about her,” I said gently.

And prodding each other, reviving each other’s memories, they did. Candy had come to them through a realtor with whom they listed the rental room, terrified of putting an ad in the paper, not knowing how to turn down someone they found undesirable, not even sure how to identify such a person. Candy had come with a large, battered suitcase and a bright new train case that had a mirror in the top when you opened it. She had moved into the smallest bedroom in the house sometime before the school year started—“She had a lot of preparation,” Mrs. Thurston said—and she just became part of the family.

“Did she have a car?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” Monica said. “It was an old Volkswagen with the two little windows in the back. It must have been as old as I was.”

“She needed it to get to school every day,” Mrs. Thurston said. “And she washed it every Saturday, even in the rain.” She laughed, and I felt myself drawn into the circle.

“Would you like to see her room?” Monica asked.

I said I would and we went upstairs. The room still looked as though it was made for a single person. There was a bed, a dresser, a night table, and a scarred old oak desk. It was a
corner room, and there was a window on each outside wall. Crisp white curtains hung in two tiers down to the sill.

“It’s almost the same as when she was here,” Monica said. “Except we got a new mattress finally so company didn’t break their backs. The lamp is different; I think the old one died. She used to sit at that desk and mark papers at night. I’d come in sometimes and we’d talk. She was like an older sister to me. Except we never fought.”

“And she helped you with your homework,” her mother said.

“She was a wonderful teacher. She had a gift for explaining things so they were clear. Everything she explained to me was easy to learn. I used to wish I could go to school in Studsburg.”

We had informally sat down, mother and daughter on the bed, I on the desk chair. “Did she have visitors?” I asked.

They looked at each other. “Not that I recall,” Mrs. Thurston said.

Monica shook her head in agreement.

“But she must have had friends.”

“Well, I used to say that to her. I would say, ‘Candy, a girl like you should go out with people your own age, even if it’s only a movie on Saturday.’ ”

“But there was no one,” I said.

“Well,” the mother said. She looked at her daughter as though Monica were still too young to hear what was coming. “She fell in love, you know.”

“She did?” Monica said.

Mrs. Thurston looked troubled. “He never came here for her. She would drive off and meet him somewhere.”

“Did she confide in you?” I asked with hope.

“Only to say he was wonderful and special and older than she. And of course, I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t available, if you know what I mean.”

“She never said a word to me,” said Momea, as though part of Candy’s obligation under her lease had been to tell Monica all her secrets.

“Well, I wouldn’t have expected it,” her mother said. “It wasn’t the kind of thing I would have wanted her to talk to you about. You were a child, and you had enough problems in your own life at that point that you didn’t need any more.”

I stood and took a last look around the room. As I started out, they followed me. The upstairs hall was covered in beige carpet, and there were family pictures on the walls. Monica had her own family now.

“Do you have any snapshots of Candy?” I asked as we went downstairs.

“I’ll get the album,” Mrs. Thurston said, and she went back up.

The pictures were old, but they were clear and sharp. They showed a girl with short, fluffy hair and a smile that could go a long way with interviewers. She always seemed to be moving. There was Candy, barefoot and in jeans, washing her car with young Monica, Candy getting out of the vintage Volkswagen, Candy jumping for a basketball, Candy and Mrs. Thurston carrying out food for a backyard picnic. There were also winter shots: Candy in a heavy coat and boots, shoveling the driveway, Candy and Monica making a snowman, Candy caught unawares reading a letter as she carried the mail to the house. Mrs. Thurston had not exaggerated Candy’s helpfulness.

“She’s awfully pretty,” I said.

“And that was the least of it,” Mrs. Thurston said. “It was that wonderful spirit she had.”

“I want to be completely honest with you.” I looked at both of them. “I’ve learned more from you than from anyone else I’ve talked to. I spoke to at least two men from Studsburg who knew Candy worked there that last year, and they said nothing about her, as though she didn’t exist. I don’t know why, and I think if I’m going to find out anything at all about who killed her, I need to know more.”

“I’ll tell you anything I can remember,” Mrs. Thurston said. “But there isn’t much more. I didn’t know that much about her.”

“Did she ever mention anything about her family? Her parents? Even her grandparents?” I still had the miraculous medal to explain, the initials A.M.

“Her mother had died, maybe a year or two before she came here, and she never ever talked about her father. I just assumed he’d died a long time before, maybe before she got to know him. She’d talk about high school sometimes, or maybe it was college, but if she mentioned any names, I forgot them a long time ago.”

“Do you have any idea where she was going when she left Studsburg?”

Mrs. Thurston rested her chin on a hand as she tried to remember. “She did have a job, I’m sure of that. She started looking for one almost as soon as she got here.”

“She went to Pennsylvania,” Monica said. “I’m sure of it. She must have left us a forwarding address, Mom.”

“Well, I just don’t know. She said she’d get in touch when she was settled, and somehow I feel she fixed it up with the post office so I wouldn’t have to do the forwarding.”

And so letters with telltale return addresses wouldn’t arrive at the house, I thought. “Did she leave at the end of the school year?”

“Around then, yes.”

“And she took everything she had with her?”

“I guess so.”

“Did she drive the old car?”

Mrs. Thurston looked uncertain. “I suppose she must have.”

“She didn’t, Mom. It broke down, don’t you remember? Right at the end of the school year.” Monica turned to me. “She’d only paid fifty dollars for it, and she got that back when she sold it.”

“Who’d she sell it to?”

“A mechanic down at the garage. I remember going by and seeing those two windows in the back.”

“So she took a bus or train wherever she was going when she left.”

“She did, yes,” Mrs. Thurston said. “I remember now. We drove her to the bus stop. Monica was with me. I had to fight back the tears.”

“So you dropped her at a bus stop and never saw her again,” I said. “Was that June or July, or isn’t that a fair question after so many years?”

“It was after school let out. She had a chance for an apartment or a room somewhere, and she wanted to move in. I wish I could remember where. But that wasn’t the last time we saw her. She came back for the Fourth of July.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“I remember!” Monica said excitedly. “She said she wanted to go to the big party at Studsburg. They were having fireworks that night.”

Mrs. Thurston nodded her head. “That’s right. She asked if she could stay just the one night, and I said sure, she could.”

“Did she?” I asked, feeling a little breathless.

“Well, that’s the whole thing. She came that afternoon, and I think I drove her over to Studsburg at some point, but she never came back.”

“Did you look for her?” I asked.

“She told me … She said not to worry if she didn’t get back before morning. I had the feeling she was going to see … you know … her friend for the last time, and maybe
that’s why she thought she’d be late. I was sure she’d be back, because she’d brought a little suitcase with her.”

“A duffel bag,” Monica interrupted. “She had a little duffel with her when she came to the house.”

Her mother smiled. “So I was sure she’d be back, but when she didn’t come the next day, I tried to call Studsburg, only all the phones were disconnected. Well, I left Monica by herself and I drove over there to see if I could find Candy.”

“Was anyone in town?”

“There were soldiers there, putting up one of those chain link fences. They certainly worked fast. I talked to a soldier, and he said everyone from town was gone. They’d been gone since noon. I should have called the police, shouldn’t I?” She looked pained, regretting a decision that would have made no difference anyway. Candy was probably dead and buried by the afternoon of the fifth.

“I understand your reluctance,” I said.

“If she was with him … If he was looking after her …”

“I know.”

“It just seemed strange that she never came back for the duffel.”

“I bet we’ve still got it.” Monica was on her feet. “Where would it be? The basement? The attic?”

I shared the excitement. She was jubilant, nearly jumping up and down.

“The attic,” Monica said, running for the stairs. “I’m sure we’ll find it.”

I followed them back up the stairs, nearly bursting with anticipation. In the center of the hall, Monica pulled a handle in the ceiling, and a flight of stairs floated down. We clambered up them as fast as we could.

The attic resembled my Aunt Meg’s, a warehouse of unused and unusable objects, a collection of articles they couldn’t bear to part with and probably never would, although they were no longer part of anyone’s life.

“Those are my husband’s golf clubs,” Mrs. Thurston said,
“and the big umbrella I bought him for his last birthday. I couldn’t ever bring myself to use it.”

Monica was watching her mother with troubled eyes. I imagined her mother keeping all those feelings to herself, not wanting to upset a child any more than the death itself had upset her. Now, with the catalyst of Candy Phillips’s mysterious departure, Mrs. Thurston had unlocked the inner door, dropped the guard of three decades, and let her feelings see the light of day—or at least the meager light of the attic. Maybe it was because I was there, a rational third person whose presence would keep a cap on their emotions.

“It would have kept you dry,” the daughter said softly.

“I know. It was just a time when I would rather get wet.”

We all stood there for a long moment, frozen in our places. Finally Mrs. Thurston picked up the huge black umbrella and handed it to her daughter. “Why don’t you give it to Alan, dear? I’m sure he can use it.”

Monica nodded and took the umbrella, tears in her eyes. She turned away and started looking for Candy Phillips’s duffel bag. A moment later she said, “Here it is.” Her voice was dispirited, as though her father’s death had taken over her being. She lifted something off the floor, brushed it off, and handed it to me.

“Let’s go downstairs,” I said, and we all went down the floating ladder.