The Christening Day Murder (23 page)

“I was trying to keep out of their way,” she went on. “I could see they were doing some kind of business. But Mrs. Eberling was nervous like. She wanted to make sure they had everything they needed, and she told me to go back and check if they wanted more coffee. When I went in, Mr. Eberling was handing an envelope to the general.”

“A general? You mean in the army?”

“Yeah, in the army. He was in uniform and I saw the star on his shoulder.”

“Could he have been Mr. Eberling’s father?”

“No way. Mr. Eberling called him Bill a couple of times, and the other man called him General something, I don’t remember what. Maybe Fitzpatrick or something like that.”

“So Mr. Eberling was giving the general an envelope.”

“And he dropped it when I came in, and it was money. I mean, it was more money than I’d ever seen in my whole life. Lots and lots of hundred-dollar bills.”

“Like a payoff,” I said.

“You bet it was a payoff. They were talking all night about that dam they were building and how it would work. And then there was the money.”

“Mrs. Knox, do you remember the name of the third man in that room?”

“Oh yeah. His name was Fred Mayor. I wrote all these things down in case I needed them. I heard the general call
him Mr. Mayor a couple of times. And Mr. Eberling called him Fred.”

The third man was Fred Larkin.

“You don’t really have to tell me what happened after that,” I said. It looked pretty plain to me, a simple case of extortion by a girl seizing on a situation that had fallen in her lap as the envelope of money had fallen on the table.

“It’s not what you think,” she said. “I didn’t start out to blackmail him. He really came to me and said I should live in a nice apartment, that I was too old to live with my mother. He got me a place that was furnished. I never even knew if he furnished it himself or he rented it that way. He said if I talked about what I’d seen that night, it could mean a serious embarrassment. That’s how he put it. I was so dumb, I didn’t even know what was going on in that town, that it was supposed to be flooded. But I could see there was something going on. Generals shouldn’t be taking money like that. I was a little scared, but I knew enough to know that what I’d seen was worth something, more than just a furnished apartment. I knew the Eberlings were moving because they’d been talking about building a new house somewhere. I kept working there, but she told me it would be all over when they moved.”

“So you were out of a job then.”

“Right. So I talked to him one day—he used to be around during the day sometimes—and I told him I wanted to go to New York or someplace and I didn’t have enough money. That’s how I said it, that I needed some money to get started.”

“And he gave you the thousand dollars.”

She laughed. “He gave me a hell of a lot more than that. He gave me five. I gave my mother one and kept the rest for myself. He also got me an apartment in New York. He didn’t pay for it, he just told me where to go to find an apartment. I lived there till I got married and moved here.”

I told her I had gotten information from the super in her old building.

She shook her head. “How the hell did you find out about that place?”

I sketched it out for her.

She laughed again. “And I thought I covered my tracks pretty good.”

“The super said someone beat you up while you were living there. I’ve been wondering about that.”

She said, “Yeah,” and lowered her eyes. “I got greedy. I figured if Eberling was good for five, he was good for ten. I wrote and asked for more money. I didn’t hear from him till he showed up one night and beat the hell out of me. Cracked one of my ribs. He said if I ever asked for another cent or opened my mouth about what I’d seen, he’d kill me. I never did. I believed him.”

She looked completely worn-out. I got up and put my coat on, thanked her for telling a story that she had hoped she would never have to repeat. Then I said, “About your mother.”

“Get out,” she said. “OK? I did my duty and told you what you want to know. It had nothing to do with any girl being killed. Now, would you please just get out?”

I took the elevator down and went outside. It had turned colder and meaner out. I turned toward Broadway where the subway was and started walking slowly, the pieces of information sliding into place, the gaps now fewer, my pulse rate probably higher. At Broadway I waited for the light. I was on the east side of the divided street, and downtown trains ran along the west side. As the light turned green, I stepped off the curb as someone behind me called, “Wait! Wait!”

At the divider, I turned to look behind me. Joanna Knox, dressed in a mink coat and the clunky sneakers, was running down the street, waving and calling, her red hair flying. I had just enough green left to make it back to the sidewalk.

Her eyes were streaming as she reached me, her makeup dissolving in rivulets. “I need the address,” she said. “My mother. Do you still have her address? She has grandkids she never saw.”

“Of course I do.” I smiled, although I felt a little teary myself.

“I don’t have a pencil or anything.”

“I do.” I took my steno book out of my bag, found a pen, and leafed through the pages till I found the address of Ginny Carpenter. I wrote it carefully, putting “Mike” in parens. “She really wants to see you.”

“Thank you.” She read the paper and nodded. “God bless,” she said, and turned and walked back to her apartment.

“Are you thinking the same thing I am?” Jack said. He was changing his clothes for his law school class, and he had very little time.

“There was a payoff that had to do with the building of the dam.”

“You said the mayor told you they’d fought the dam.”

“Yes. But he said the little people never won those fights.”

“What else could he say if he was in on the payoff?”

“When we took that walk on Sunday—”

“That’s just what I’m thinking. There was a kind of natural basin upstream. If they had built the dam the other side of Studsburg, they wouldn’t have had to flood a whole town and make five hundred people find new places to live. It sure as hell had to be a lot more expensive for the government than paying a couple of farmers for the value of their land. Could be Eberling and Larkin had big stakes in Studsburg, and this was their way of getting their money out.”

“Maybe it was everybody’s way out, Jack. Amy Broderick told me her father had been commuting to Rochester for a long time and they moved up there after they left Studsburg. I’ll bet a lot of people wanted to sell and couldn’t, and the dam represented a windfall. J.J. Eberling was an army brat. He could have known people very high up through his father, and he bribed this general to see to it that the dam was placed downstream of Studsburg instead of downstream of those farms and upstream of Studsburg.”

“Sounds like it’s falling into place.” He reached into the closet and pulled out a tie. “How’s this with my jacket?”

“Looks great to me. What do you need a tie for? You should see what the kids wear at the college I teach at.”

“I am a law student, my dear. And what I lack in legal expertise, I make up for with my fashion wardrobe.”

“You should never ask an ex-nun if something matches,” I warned him. “Especially if she wore a habit. They’re notorious for having no sense of what goes with what.”

“You’re different and I’m late. Give me one for the road.”

We kissed and he picked up some notebooks and dashed for the door. “Hey, almost forgot to tell you. I got a call from Albany this afternoon. Your friend Degenkamp had a registered thirty-eight when he lived in Studsburg.”

“Degenkamp?”

“Right.”

“What about Larkin?”

“Nothing registered. And neither one has a registered handgun now. Lock up when you leave, and let me know where you are tomorrow.”

“I will,” I called as he bounded down the stairs. A little while later I drove home.

   I called the Stiflers as soon as I got there and asked if I could come over. I had not told them that Henry Degenkamp had died, but they already knew. The younger Mrs. D. had called them, and they were planning to drive to Ithaca for the funeral on Friday.

“We’ll be going tomorrow night,” Carol said, “so we can stay over with Harry’s mother and take her with us. From what we were told, his death sounds downright peculiar.”

“It is,” I agreed. “Henry got a call from Fred Larkin after I left the Larkins’ house. Then Henry went out and they never saw him again.”

“Something’s really weird,” Carol said.

“I have a favor to ask you, Harry. I’d like you to call your mother and ask her if the flooding of Studsburg was set up by Fred Larkin and J.J. Eberling so everyone in town could make some money.”

“That’s crazy,” he said. “My folks loved that town.”

“The house your mother lives in now. How does it compare with the one they left behind?”

“Well, it’s better, but people always buy up a notch.”

“Did they have much of a mortgage?”

He looked at me as though I’d just opened a door he’d never seen beyond. “I’ll call my mother,” he said.

“Tell her it was a long time ago and no one cares anymore. No one’s going to be charged with anything. The principals are dead. I just want to know what went on.”

It was a longer call than I had anticipated. While he was on the phone I went back over some of the little articles in the last issue of the
Herald
. Penny and Paul Armstrong settle in Arizona. Like all the other pieces, it was short and upbeat. Paul and Penny had bought themselves a great retirement home near Tucson. They had a dishwasher in the kitchen and the kind of stove Penny had always dreamed of. On the next page was a similar article about the Mulhollands. Their new house outside of Rochester had been completed in June and was ready for them to move into the day after they celebrated the christening and the Fourth. Further along was something about the mayor himself. He and Gwen were moving about sixty miles east to a wonderful house they had been remodeling over the last year. Everyone who ever lived in Studsburg was invited to visit. Included were their new address and
telephone number. Three out of three sounded like they were doing a lot better after their move.

While I waited, I went back over the pictures. The Eberlings were there, the Larkins were there, the Degenkamps were there. There was no trace of Candy, night or day.

Harry finally got off the phone and came into the living room. “You know, I’m fifty-four years old and I’ve never heard my mother so rattled. Even when my father died, she held herself together, at least in public. But you’re right, Kix. Something was going on that Carol and I never knew about.”

“You weren’t property owners,” I said.

“That has to be it. And we were newly married, so we didn’t care much what went on around us. It all started years before when there were studies about flooding and irrigation and water control. She said there was a natural place to dam up the water and put a couple of farms out of business, but J.J. Eberling came up with the idea that Studsburg should be flooded instead. But it was Fred Larkin who came around and talked to every family in town to see if they would go for it. Mom’s pretty sure that J.J. benefited more than anyone else, but she said no one could have sold their house for what the government gave them. It sounds like it was a real sweet deal.”

“Does she know how it was done?”

“All she knows is that J.J. handled it. Somehow he had a friendly ear in the army.”

“That pretty much confirms what I learned today. And it means that Fred Larkin knew something that could send J.J. to jail. So when J.J. accidentally published something that Larkin found incriminating, he told J.J. to destroy the paper or else.”

“But you’ve looked through the paper, Kix. There’s nothing there but a bunch of boring articles on how Mr. and Mrs. Somebody are doing in their new home. And how does it tie in to the schoolteacher?”

“I think she found out about the payoff to flood Studsburg and she threatened to expose Larkin and J.J.”

“It doesn’t square with what Mom told me. We talked about that, too. She admitted she knew something was going on between the mayor and the new schoolteacher, but she didn’t think it had anything to do with the dam being built. From what she said, I gather my father talked to Fred about the rumors, and Fred said it was a personal matter and not to worry about the dam. He also told Dad to mind his business.”

I went home a little while later. With all that I knew, there had to be one major piece missing from the puzzle. Henry Degenkamp’s death, even if the result of natural causes, was suspicious. Gwen Larkin’s death in a single vehicle accident was equally suspicious. And both people had a close relationship to Fred Larkin.

And now I knew that Henry had owned a .38-caliber revolver. Had he committed the murder or had he given the gun to Larkin? Larkin had said something to Henry on the telephone on Monday, and in some way that had caused Henry’s death. A threat? A warning? I didn’t think I had a chance in the world of finding out anything from Larkin. In fact, my sources of information were drying up. Henry was dead, Eberling was dead, Larkin wouldn’t tell me anything and might be dangerous to boot.

Before I went to bed, I called Jack and told him what old Mrs. Stifler had finally admitted to. I said I would probably go upstate in the morning. Maybe I’d do this, maybe I’d do that. In any case, I wanted to convey my condolences to Ellie Degenkamp. Jack remarked that I didn’t sound hopeful and assured me something would break; it always did. I hoped he was right.

Ithaca had a layer of new snow, and Cayuga Heights looked like something out of a picture book. The streets were freshly plowed and most of the sidewalks had been shoveled, at least one snow shovel’s width, but lawns were clean white blankets, and trees stretched out branches with an even two inches of white. But the fairy tale ended at the Degenkamps’ doorstep. Several cars were parked at the curb and across the street, and as I turned off my motor, an old woman in a dark coat and clumsy boots was just leaving their house. The younger Mrs. Degenkamp was seeing her out.