On Turpentine Lane(61)

She whispered, “Harry Belafonte.”

Now she was looking through the handbag in her lap. I had the paranoid notion, surely inspired by Masterpiece Mystery, that she’d extract a petite pearl-handled gun and shoot me. What she brought forth was a roll of wintergreen Life Savers, took one, offered none.

“Just tell me that Jeannette and her twin sister are the babies in these pictures and no one hurt them.” I made a fast mental inventory of my worries, and added, “And that they’re asleep, and the word taken meant it was the day they went to live with Joseph’s mother.”

Ruthie called over. “They fight when they’re here, in case you were thinking it was all lovey-dovey.”

I asked Mrs. Lavoie, “Is that true? You and your daughter have words?”

She didn’t argue with “daughter,” but she didn’t confirm that, either. What she said was “She doesn’t come by bus. She drives.”

I tried one more time. “Did Joseph’s mother adopt the babies?”

“No.”

“But she raised them?”

“Someone did.”

I was now, finally, as annoyed as one can get with an ancient, wheelchair-bound, uncooperative witness. I said, “You know every one of these answers! And I can find out. The front desk keeps a sign-in sheet. They’ll tell me their names.”

“What are you, a detective?” she asked.

“I could be! And maybe I’ll get a commendation, a civilian commendation for solving the Turpentine Lane murders.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your husbands, the two you pushed down the stairs.”

“They fell,” she said. “Both of them were drunk . . . they were drinkers.”

“What a coincidence.”

“I called an ambulance. The police came—”

“Who are, as we speak, in my cellar looking for bloodstains. Someone squealed.”

“I’m tired,” said Mrs. Lavoie. “You have to leave.”

“Why does Jeannette visit you? Is she trying to get the same answers I am?”

She half raised herself out of the wheelchair seat, and snarled, “I can have you removed.”

“I’ve never met anyone like you,” I railed. “Not in my entire life. It makes me sorry I bought your house.”

“Poor you,” she said, Life Saver clicking.

“You can still go to jail,” I said.

“Ha!”

“You don’t think so? They send old Nazis back where they came from even when they’re ninety. And put them on trial even if they’ve lived quiet lives in a suburb of Chicago for, like, sixty years!”

“I don’t think she was ever a Nazi,” Ruthie volunteered.

“You’re the crazy one,” Mrs. Lavoie charged. “You’re the one who’s going to jail.”

What did I think I was going to accomplish here? As I sat there wondering, she snatched both photos out of my distracted hand.

“They were pretty little things, weren’t they?” she asked.





38





We’re Done Here


I DROVE BACK TO TURPENTINE LANE and went straight downstairs to report every detail of Mrs. Lavoie’s semiconfession. Detective Dolan said, awfully casually, “Yup. That’s what I meant about her going in and out.”

“I thought you meant in and out of consciousness, not back and forth between lies and the truth.”

“She looks pretty good, doesn’t she? Was she all dolled up with lipstick and rouge and everything?”

Rouge? Was he ninety, too? I said, “She threw me out. I upset her, asking about the twins. And she snatched the photos!”

He quipped, too jovially for the state I was in, “Should I arrest her?”

Ignoring that, I reported that her roommate spoke of a visitor named Jeannette who argues with her.

“Jeannette?” he repeated—rather sharply, I thought.

“Do you know a Jeannette who fits the bill?” I asked, thinking but not saying Sixty years old, biracial, argumentative?

Detective Dolan looked over to where Hennessy and Oskowski, presumably out of earshot, were inspecting my floor with what I now know was a black light. He motioned I should follow him in the opposite direction. By the washer and dryer, he said, “This is off the record. I’m not telling you this, and you’re not hearing it, okay?” He checked his teammates again before answering. “The anonymous tip? About the cellar? Came from a Jeannette.”

“How is that anonymous?”

“It was meant to be. She didn’t give her name, but she had caller ID.”

“Did it show her last name, too!”

“I can’t say.”

“Yes, you can.”

I heard something that sounded like “Pepperstine” through his barely moving lips.

“Pepperstine?” I repeated.

“Pepperdine.”

“Where was she calling from? Or just tell me the area code.”

“This one,” he said.

“So you’ve interviewed her?”

He mumbled some noncommittal syllables.

“Yes? No?”