The Church of the Holy Child Read online

  “Sounds like she took your advice.”

  My cell phone rang before I could digest the truckload of guilt Katie had just dumped in my lap.

  “Hello?”

  “Got any time to finish what we started?”

  I sank into my chair, coat still on and smiled. “Hey.”

  Katie left the room on queue.

  “I wish that’s why I was calling,” Griff said, “but I’m standing in a field beside the Amtrak station looking at a dead woman with a one-way ticket to Miami and your card in her purse. Train was to leave at 5 a.m.”

  “Shirley Trudeau.”

  “That’s the one. How’d you know?

  “She was in the process of leaving her abusive husband. When her sister didn’t get the signal that she was safely out of town, she called our office.”

  “Why didn’t she call the police?”

  “I haven’t talked with her yet, but my guess would be two things, she knew Shirley had been in touch with me and the police require a twenty-four-hour waiting period before they’ll look for a missing person. We start the meter whenever they want us to. How’d she die?”

  “Blow to the head, actually, quite a few. Someone out walking their dog early this morning found her, her suitcase ten feet away. M.E. says she’s been here a few hours.”

  “She was leaving on my advice.”

  “Haggerty wants to hear all about it.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  Chief Haggerty was Sergeant Haggerty when I graduated law school. More than a few times I’d had cops on the stand and naively used the opportunity as a soapbox to highlight the lack of protection for women in the midst of domestic disputes. Suffice it to say I wasn’t in high standing with Haggerty at the time. So, he wasn’t thrilled when Griff and I started dating and even less ecstatic when we went into business together. He’s been trying to tempt Griff with a position in CID, Portland’s Criminal Investigation Department, for the past few years and chooses to blame me every time Griff declines. But I’m not the reason.

  Griff followed in his father’s footsteps and graduated from the police academy at top of his class. He’d made detective by the time he was thirty, proving an uncanny skill in solving the unsolvable. But when his dad died his mother fell apart. Said she couldn’t risk losing her son too. That’s when Griff left the force and opened his PI firm. When she passed away two years later he began appeasing Haggerty by assisting whenever they needed an extra pair of eyes, but made it clear that he wasn’t coming back to the department.

  “Got the husband yet?” I asked.

  “No, but they’re working on it. He’s a rep for a pharmaceutical company. His supervisor said he left for his route at nine o’clock this morning. He’s generally gone until six or seven in the evening.”

  “Great, a traveling salesman with an impossible to prove alibi. How’d you get on sight so fast?”

  “I have my connections.”

  “John wanted a second opinion?”

  “A first actually, he hadn’t made it to the scene yet himself.”

  “Jesus, he’s really walking the edge.”

  “Cut him a little slack will you? The guy’s got twenty years on me.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  John Stark had been Griff’s dad’s partner and was standing right behind him at the door of the liquor store when he’d been fatally shot. They weren’t even on duty, just going in for a six-pack after a softball game. Caught in the midst of a robbery gone wrong. Since then John had become a father figure, and Griff the son he’d never had. Which is another reason why Griff won’t go back to the department. If they were both in CID the “family” dynamic would change. For the most part they keep competition to a round of golf or fly-fishing when the salmon are running.

  “What’s going on at the scene?” I asked.

  “They bagged a brick that was left behind. Looks like it did the damage.”

  “Kinda weird that was left behind, isn’t it?”

  “Hard to say at this point. They’ll run it for prints, but I doubt they’ll find anything. Guy can’t be that stupid.”

  “Not many people think clearly in a fit of passion. What else is going on?”

  “The usual, lots of yellow police tape and clicking cameras. Good thing I wore my new blue shirt. It brings out my eyes, right?”

  “I’m sure that’s your main concern.”

  He laughed. “I’m going to hang out here a little longer. Call Beth Jones and set up a meeting.”

  “Will do. Hey,” I said before he hung up. “Was it definitely the beating that killed her? No ligature marks on her neck or anything?”

  “Some bruising on her neck suggests she was held down, but not strangled. We’ll have to wait for Gina to work her magic.”

  Gina Wellington was the state Medical Examiner, but ask any guy in the precinct and they’d tell you she missed her calling as a Victoria Secret model.

  “Does it make a difference to you?” Griff asked.

  “No, but she’d been beaten for years. I just hope the last one was quick, for her sake.”

  The last time I’d seen Shirley, we’d been hunched over lattes at Starbucks.

  “You really think it’s time?” she’d asked.

  It was fear talking. I knew she was more than ready to go and so did she.

  “Shirley, if you wait he could…”

  “I know, I know. Kill me. Why do I feel so hesitant then?”

  “You’re just scared. Rightly so, but you have to push through it.”

  She’d pushed through it all right. Followed my advice, set up a plan with the shelter and now she was dead. I remembered her face as she was leaving Starbucks. She’d turned back to me at the door, given me a thumbs-up and a big, beautiful smile.

  “Britt, you can’t save them all,” Griff said.

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t try. What’s up for tonight?” I asked changing the subject and blinking back tears.

  “Dinner with Allie.”

  “Your house?”

  “Spaghetti okay with you?”

  “I’ll bring the Chianti.” I hung up the phone grateful that I had a place to go tonight that would provide a distraction.

  Allie, Griff’s teenaged daughter, was more likely to vent to me when Griff couldn’t understand why she had to have the latest iPhone or iPad or at the very least, a new pair of Diesel jeans. We girl talked, which at thirteen, you can’t do with your Dad or your Mom. And since I had no intention of bringing a child of my own into this God-forsaken world, Allie allowed me to taste motherhood without having to eat the whole thing.

  I slipped out of my coat and hung it on the cherry coat rack, a gift from Griff when I’d finished scraping cobwebs off the ceiling and applied the final coat of Lemon Ice paint to transform his storeroom into my new digs. There was a big difference between Griff’s office and mine and I don’t mean in status. The layouts were carbon copies, but while my Pottery Barn décor offered warmth and comfort and said, ‘talk to me’, Griff’s array of half-finished cups of Starbuck’s, stacks of manila files and random pieces of paper scattered on the desk and floor screamed, ‘clean me’. It wasn’t hard to understand why most male clients took refuge in Griff’s office while females found their way into mine.

  Katie poked her head around the doorway and stepped inside. “Nothing like a dead body to start your week off right, huh?” she asked and pushed aside a stack of files on the desk to make room for her coffee and a four-inch mound of glazed carbohydrate. A splash from her take-out cup left a brown puddle on a folder. She watched it soak in, shrugged and sat down.

  “I overheard your conversation,” she said.

  “Overheard or listened in?”

  “In this business they’re one and the same.” She took a bite of her bear claw.

  “Travis isn’t going to be pleased with that choice,” I said nodding at the pastry.

  “What happens in this office is confidential and should not be discussed wi
th anyone, including my boyfriend. It’s in my contract.”

  I laughed. “You find a way around everything.”

  “Makes me good at what I do,” she said taking another bite.

  Katie was a runner and had the body to prove it, but as Travis kept telling her, it would only work as efficiently as the fuel she put in it. Despite the bear claws and cheese curls, at five-nine, one hundred-twenty pounds, her body seemed to work pretty well.

  “They just found the husband,” Katie said, “A uniform’s bringing him in.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Police scanner.”

  “Did he resist?”

  “Not at all. From what I could gather he seemed surprised. And Beth Jones just called again. She’s anxious to talk to you.”

  The phone on my desk rang.

  Katie picked it up and tongued a piece of bear claw against her cheek. “Cole and Co., Britt Callahan’s office.” She extended the receiver toward me. “Griff,” she mouthed and resumed chewing.

  “They’re bringing her husband in now. He was in Kingston so it’ll be a couple of hours.”

  “I know.”

  “You know? How?”

  I glanced at Katie. “Never mind.”

  “You reach her sister yet?”

  “I left a message on her voice mail that we’d be out to talk with her.”

  “I’ll be at the office in twenty minutes to pick you up.”

  “You working for the department on this case or with me?” I asked.

  “Until Haggerty draws a line I’ll straddle the middle. We all want the same thing here.”

  “Before we go see Beth Jones, I’m making a stop at the morgue. I’ve got an apology to make.”

  “Apologize for what?” Griff asked.

  “I told her to leave him.”

  “You didn’t tell him to kill her.”

  “I might as well have.”

  “Make it quick.”

  I grabbed my coat and headed for the door.

  FOUR

  No matter how many times I visit, the morgue is one of those places that sends me right back into my childhood bedroom. There’s a shadow hovering near my half-opened closet door and if I squint just right it slides along the wall toward my bed. I don’t yell for my mom ‘cause she’s probably passed out on her had-to-have, silk, floral couch in the living room. A martini still dangling between her perfectly manicured fingers. And I don’t yell for my dad ‘cause he’s probably not home anyway. I huddle under the blankets and make myself small.

  That’s how I felt as I descended into the bowels of the hospital. The elevator doors opened and a dimly lit concrete hallway stretched before me. I walked toward the double doors with my heart knocking against my ribs. It wasn’t until I stepped up to the glass cubicle outside of the morgue’s entrance that I exhaled.

  “Hey, Robert,” I said to the aide sitting behind the counter.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while.” He reached for a buzzer in the vicinity of his knee. “Who’re you here for?” he asked and nodded when I told him.

  Typically, the morgue isn’t available to your run of the mill PI, but I’d made this trip enough times with Griff or Stark or even the occasional client from my days with Hughes and Sandown. My face was familiar enough that a lot of people cut me slack with trivial details like who’s allowed where.

  I trailed Robert toward the wall of stainless steel drawers and hugged my arms around me, fending off the chill in the room. A lone gurney stood against the far wall. Other than that, and the stool Robert had been sitting on, there was no furniture. No windows to let in the sun or sky and no sound but the hum of the overhead fluorescents and the scrape of metal on metal when a body is rolled into view.

  Robert opened a drawer to his right and slid out the remains tray. He drew back the sheet exposing Shirley’s face and walked away. “Let me know when you’re done,” he said over his shoulder.

  She looked just the way she had the last time I’d seen her, petite and blond and pretty as long as I looked beyond the black and blue patchwork that stretched from chin to forehead. Her eyes, when I’d told her to leave him, had been huge and green, albeit scared. Now they were mounds of red, puffy flesh. She’d been wiped clean for the most part, but traces of dried, black blood still clung to her eyelashes. There was a full handprint around her neck. Whoever had done this had held her still while they used her face like a speed bag.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “If I…if it was…” I lay my hand on her shoulder. It was cold and hard. My stomach turned, literally flipped right over and I had to look away for a minute.

  “Guess she’s free now.” Robert had come behind me unheard and I jumped.

  “I don’t know that I’d call this free,” I said.

  “Better than getting beat up. They get her old man?”

  “How do you know who they’re looking for?”

  He shrugged. “I got ears.”

  “Why wasn’t she taken to Augusta, to the M.E.’s office?”

  “Body back-up. She’s got a ticket for the next bus.”

  “Jesus,” I shook my head.

  “Did they get him?” He asked again.

  “I’m sure the police will have some questions for him.” I walked away from Robert and into the hallway before he slid Shirley back into her berth inside the wall. I didn’t want to see him do it or hear the metal drawer click into place.

  Out on the street, I squinted in the sunshine and mumbled a request for Shirley to find peace, hoping whoever was in charge of that sort of thing would hear me.

  Griff’s black SUV pulled up to the curb and I slipped onto the passenger seat.

  “You look a little distraught,” he said.

  “Morgue’s not exactly a good time.”

  “I don’t know why you had to go there.” He pulled me against him.

  “I had to see her. Her husband here yet?”

  “Soon. Ready to see her sister?”

  “Anything will be better than seeing Shirley.”

  FIVE

  Sanford, Maine is a has-been mill town close to the New Hampshire border where prosperity ended when the factory doors closed. It came close a few years ago when it was the proposed site for a casino and an eighteen-hole golf course. Residents however, voted down the bill arguing that it would erode Maine’s quality of life. I can’t say I disagreed. More recently, with the economic downturn folks looking for real estate in Maine that won’t claim their first-born have begun to notice Sanford. It’s close enough to the beaches and the interstate to make location, location, location, slip off their tongues and with a little TLC they just might turn a profit. Sanford might well be on its way to reclaiming its lost self-esteem.

  Griff stopped the car in front of a brown split-level with a double-rail, wooden fence along the front and a metal swing set out back. Other than the grass needing mowing and a few fence rails missing it looked the way a home should look, cared for, but lived in. We were about halfway up a flagstone walkway when the front door opened and a blond woman stepped outside blowing her nose. She looked so much like Shirley that it stopped me short. I stood there staring at her until Griff took my arm and pulled me along. He held up his ID for her to read. From the way her eyes looked, I’m sure it was nothing more than a blur in front of her face.

  “Are you Beth Jones, Shirley Trudeau’s sister?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m Griff Cole. This is Britt Callahan.

  “When I called this morning I said she was a missing person. At the time I didn’t…the police were here an hour ago. They told me…oh my God.” She started to cry and covered her mouth with a fisted hand. In it she held a balled-up wad of toilet paper.

  “I’m not sure if you still need our services. Under the circumstances,” I added.

  “Oh, I still want you,” she said. “Shirley went to the police more times than I can count. Look how much good it did. I know who did this and I’ll pay to prove it.” She took a st
ep back and nodded for us to come inside.

  We followed her into the house, up a set of seven stairs and across a brown, wool rug into the living room. She settled onto the sofa and tucked her legs beneath her. Her bare feet cloaked amidst the folds of her navy blue sweat pants. Judging by the size, they were her husband’s. Griff and I followed opting for the matching plaid recliners. We sat with our hands folded in our laps. The room was stone still except for Beth’s uneven breathing.

  From her home décor I concluded that her wallet couldn’t match her commitment to find her sister’s killer and started making mental calculations as to how we could reduce the $2000. retainer we charged for a case like this. Griff would grunt and growl when I brought up shaving our fee, but it was just for show. He’d probably done the math already.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said breaking the silence. “I knew Shirley. She’d come to me for legal advice.”

  “She’d mentioned your name. That’s why I called you. She was excited and ready and…it shouldn’t have ended like this,” Beth said between quick gasps for air. “She should have killed the bastard a long time ago. That’s the advice I gave her. I even made a plan.”

  “That’s probably not something you want to share with the police,” Griff offered. “At least not the part about the plan.”

  “I know. She had to do it her way anyway, she insisted it was the best thing for Brooke.”

  “Her daughter?” I asked.

  She nodded. “She’s downstairs watching TV with Jake, my son. Shirley told me that as soon as she got settled she’d be in touch and we’d make arrangements for her to get Brooke. It killed her to leave that little girl, but she said it was the safest way. Now she’ll never see her again.”

  That brought a fresh deluge, but I couldn’t blame her, the thought made me teary as well. I looked away and took a breath.

  “She’d orchestrated this plan with someone from the women’s shelter. Is that correct?” Griff asked, scribbling onto a small pad of paper he’d taken from his shirt pocket.

  “Yes,” Beth said. “I don’t know who she was working with, but she talked with them a lot.”