The Happy Birthday Murder (9 page)

“I guess you never got the cake,” I said.

“You know what? I did. He made an arrangement with the caterer and they delivered a little box with a big piece of cake in it. He was that kind of man. He never forgot a promise.”

“What kinds of problems might come up during the night?” I asked.

“Oh, a lot of things. Round that time we had problems with the furnace. After Mr. Filmore died, they just replaced the whole thing. Pretty expensive, but it hadda be done. Sometimes the power would go off in a storm. We also have a lot of chemicals and leather, so the fire alarm system has to be watched for smoke and water leaks. Once a vagrant came in and I couldn't get rid of him. Don't ask
me how he found this place. It's off the beaten track, to say the least.”

I had thought so myself as I drove to it. “Did Mrs. Filmore take over the business after her husband died?” She had told me she had.

“Yeah, for a while. But it wasn't right for her. She started comin' in days like her husband did, but after a coupla months she hired a plant manager and some other people to run the business. She still owns it, and she comes in once in a while, specially around the holidays, but she don't run the place anymore.”

That squared with what she had told me. “I'm sure it's a very hard job,” I said.

“You gotta know a lot and she didn't. Everybody helped, but she could see it wasn't working out. She did what was right for the company.”

“And I guess you're happy working here.”

“It's a great job. I'll retire in a few years with a nice pension. Then I'll have to learn how to stay up when it's light out.” He grinned again.

There didn't seem to be much else I could ask. We had both finished our coffee and I was sure he wanted to get home. “Bottom line,” I said, “you didn't call the Filmores that night.”

“No, ma'am. Didn't call and didn't have a reason to. It was a quiet night. I didn't hear till Sunday afternoon when the police came that he was missing, and I couldn't believe it.”

“Sometimes you remember things,” I said. “Here's my phone number if something comes to you. Anything at all. I really think there's a good chance someone killed Mr. Filmore and I'd like to find out who.”

“I'll think about it,” he said, gathering the cups and napkins from the table.

We went out to the parking lot together, shook hands, and walked to our separate cars.

I hadn't expected to get anything useful from Charlie Calhoun, so I wasn't disappointed. Nor did I think he was holding back. He had seemed quite up-front and I believed that his affection for “the boss” was genuine.

I got home to find Jack and Eddie putting together a Sunday breakfast with bacon and eggs. The coffee smelled a lot better than what I had drunk half an hour earlier.

“Where did you go, Mommy?” Eddie asked as I took my coat off.

“I had to talk to someone very early.”

“A policeman?”

“No, sweetheart, not the police.” Obviously he remembered where Jack had gone yesterday afternoon.

We all pitched in and had a good breakfast and went to mass. In the afternoon, we picked up Gene and took a drive that ended with a sundae at one of our favorite places. I enjoyed the feeling of relaxation with my family, knowing that after today I was going to be very busy looking into the case.

When I got into bed many hours later, I picked up a mystery by Agatha Christie, one that I had never read. It put me in the mood of my students, and I liked that.

My day began early on Monday, as soon as Eddie was off to school. I drove up to Betty's house and got there at midmorning.

“She's a nice woman,” Betty said when we were inside.

“Yes, she is. And she's lived with this terrible uncertainty for a dozen years. She's never been able to figure out why her husband would take his life, especially after one of the happiest occasions he had ever experienced.”

“Let me ask you something, Chris. If we establish that Laura's husband's death is somehow connected to Darby, does that mean that Darby may have been murdered, too?”

“I think someone may have contributed to his death, not that someone shot him or anything like that, but that in some way this person prevented Darby from being found.”

“I guess that means I have some unhappy times ahead of me, thinking about how he was treated.”

“Does that change how you feel about pursuing this?”

“It's too late to stop now that we've started. Come into the dining room. I've got stuff spread out all over the table.”

Most of the things on the table were maps, interesting maps. One was an aerial view with the house Darby had started out from, the woods behind it, clearings, ponds, more woods, and a number of houses he could have
reached, although they were fairly far from his starting point, a mile or more. And on the perimeter were roads. If only you knew where you were going, you could reach a road. It made the tragedy seem that much worse when you could see rescue so close at hand.

“You know,” I said, looking at that map, “if Darby took a turn here or here,” I pointed to two places perhaps half a mile from a road, “he could have ended up on a busy highway.”

“What are you thinking?”

“That it's possible, now that I see the whole layout, that he did get to a road and Larry Filmore might have picked him up.”

“Why was Larry Filmore there?”

“When we know that, we'll know why he left home in the middle of the night and what the great secret in his life was. All I'm suggesting is that he may actually have been a Good Samaritan. He's driving to meet whoever called him at home, he sees Darby at the side of the road, realizes he needs help and he's not a threat, stops, and picks him up.”

“Darby knew his name and my address. Why didn't he return him to us?”

“Because he was in a hurry. Whoever called him threatened him in some way. If he had stopped to find where Darby lived, he wouldn't have arrived at his destination on time and something terrible would have happened. That's my theory.”

“So the Good Samaritan delivered my son into the hands of a killer.”

“Possibly. Remember, that's only one explanation of the facts. It's equally plausible that Darby knocked on a door himself, one of these houses here.”

“There was a lot of publicity, Chris. The police drove along roads with loudspeakers.”

“Betty, it's very unlikely that Larry Filmore found Darby in the woods, sat down with him and exchanged sneakers, and let him go. It defies explanation.”

“You're right. Their paths crossed either at someone's house or, as you suggested, in Larry Filmore's car. Why did Larry Filmore kill himself?”

“I don't know. Maybe someone made a terrible threat against his family and he knew the threat would evaporate if he was no longer living. And maybe someone very clever killed him and made it look like suicide.”

“And Laura has no idea what this is about?”

“Not at all. He left the house and was found a few days later in his car in his own garage, dead of a single bullet to the side of his head. The gun was next to him.”

We stood there looking down at the dining room table with the maps spread over its entire surface. Then Betty said, “Let's get started.”

We folded the maps and went out to her car. This time I had come prepared for the woods. I had bought myself a small compass. With that and the maps, I had more faith in my ability to find my way back to a starting point.

This time we didn't start from the friend's home. Instead, Betty drove us to a rural area at the eastern end of the map, where three houses stood along a rustic road, a few hundred feet apart from each other. The first two were brick and could have been fifteen or twenty years old, although I'm no expert. The third one, farthest down the road, appeared to be an old farmhouse.

“These two,” Betty said as she turned into the first driveway, “belonged to a mother and daughter. The mother was in her sixties twelve years ago and the daughter was married with two children. The name here is Warren.”

We got out of the car and went up to the front door. A chime played a short tune when Betty pushed the button,
and the door was opened almost immediately by a whitehaired woman wearing dark brown wool pants, a yellow shirt, and a camel-colored sweater over it.

“I know you,” she said, looking at Betty as though trying to pull a name out of the past.

“Betty Linton. My son, Darby Maxwell, was lost in the woods twelve years ago.”

“Oh, yes, the poor child. Come in; come in. It's cold out there.”

We went inside to a very warm living room with a woodstove in the fireplace. The heat that radiated from it was very strong, and I could imagine it warmed the whole downstairs. We made introductions and sat down.

“I remember you now,” Mrs. Warren said. “My husband joined the search party back then. Your son died, didn't he?”

“Yes. Thank you for helping.”

“That's when I met you; I remember now. You came by afterward to thank us.”

“Yes. A lot of people were very helpful. I'm eternally grateful.”

“You don't find many people anymore who say thank you. I'm sorry it turned out the way it did.”

“Mrs. Warren, some new information has been found. We think Darby may have spent some time in a house before he died.”

“It wasn't here. We would have turned him in.”

“I know that. But maybe you've heard something over the years.”

She shook her head. “It's pretty lonely out here. My daughter who lives next door didn't say anything and our neighbor down the road—I don't know if they were there when it happened. They're away a lot.”

“Mrs. Warren,” I said, “do you know people around here who own guns?”

“Hunting guns? Lots of folks have 'em. My husband used to do some hunting. When he died last year, I got rid of the gun.”

“I was thinking more of handguns.”

“That's harder to know about. Probably the police know. They've got to be licensed.”

“Back when Darby got lost, were the people around here longtime residents?”

“All three of these houses had the same people in them. The neighbors farther down, the Gallaghers, they bought that house about twenty years ago. Now there's other houses—no, they're newer. They weren't here then. But if you go up this road to the end and turn right, there's other houses there.”

Betty was shaking her head. “He would have come to this road first.”

“You're right. Poor thing. Such a sad way to die.”

“Did you ever know anyone named Filmore?” I asked. “Lawrence Filmore and his wife, Laura.”

She shook her head. “I knew a Laura, but it's not Filmore. Talk to my daughter, girls. She's home now and she's much more outgoing than I am. She's active in the garden club and the church and she does some volunteer work at the school. She knows lots of people. But she doesn't have any guns.”

“Thank you,” I said.

We got up and left.

“Sure, come right in.” Mrs. Warren's daughter, Michelle Franklin, was effusive in welcoming us. “Make yourselves comfortable. I'll fix us some coffee.”

Before we could decline, she was off to the kitchen, banging things around, calling to us to sit wherever we wanted. Five minutes later, she was carrying in coffee cake that looked wonderful and then the rest of her offering.

“How's Mom?” she asked as she poured coffee into flowered mugs.

“Oh, you mean your mom?” I said.

She laughed. “I haven't called her yet today.”

“She's fine. That's some wood-burning stove she's got over there.”

“Aren't they wonderful? Her heating bill is almost nothing. That little stove just pours its heat all over the house. We've got it fixed so it goes up to her bedroom through a vent in the living room ceiling. There we are. Sugar? Cream? This is great cake. My friend baked it yesterday and I just happened to visit and came away with a nice chunk.”

It took a while to steer her to the subject, but when we did she remembered the search for Darby and a lot of details that impressed Betty.

“Our kids were young then,” she said. “My father joined the search party right away. They had a skirmisher line—you know how they walk in a line touching fingers? I don't think he came home till almost morning.”

“Do you know where they started from?”

“Where the boy was last seen, southwest of here. My husband couldn't join the search because he was out of town when it happened, but I went into the woods back there,” she pointed toward the rear of the house, “and did some looking myself. I never saw any trace of him.”

“Do you know who found him?” I asked.

“That was old Mr. Dailey. He's gone now. He was out with a whole lot of men and he sighted the boy first. At least that's what they said.” She turned to Betty. “This must be very painful for you.”

“I need to find the truth,” she said. “Don't worry about me. Just keep talking.”

“What can I tell you?”

“We think Darby may have stopped at a house in the days before he was found.”

“I don't think so,” Michelle said. “Everyone knew he was missing. There were flyers all over town, on the school bulletin board; they talked about it at church. I even saw you on television,” she said to Betty. “Why would anyone take him in and then not call the police?”

“We aren't sure,” I said. “I thought maybe someone you know might have let something slip over the years.”

She shook her head.

“Were there any empty houses or barns in the area at that time?”

“There are lots of empty barns and some empty houses. I'm sure the police checked them all out. They really worked very hard to find him.”

“What about the people next door?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I can't remember exactly, but I know they usually go away around Labor Day for a few weeks. That happened in September, didn't it?”

Betty nodded.

“They were probably away. They're a couple with grown children now. He does some computer work and he's been working out of the house for a long time, from before when it became the thing to do. She does some work at the hospital, in the accounting department, I think.”

“Are you friends?”

“We've known each other a long time and we get together, but we're not close friends.”

“And you think they weren't home when Darby disappeared.” I made a note in my book.

“It's hard to tell. They often drive up the road that way.” She pointed toward the house next door. “We usually go the other way. So if they don't pass my house, I don't know if they're home or not. I don't really see their house
through the trees. And frankly, there's no way they would take in a boy like your son and then just let him go. They're good people.”

I asked if she knew anyone named Filmore and she said she didn't. “Wasn't there a president with that name?”

“With two
ls.
This one has only one.”

“Sorry.”

We left a little after that. The couple next up the road were Dave and Frannie Gallagher and we drove over to see if they had anything to contribute. The door was opened by a tall man in black corduroy pants, a gray knit shirt, and a black sweater over it. He called his wife, who came into the living room and greeted us.

“I don't have much time,” she said. “I'm due at work.”

“Just a few questions, Mrs. Gallagher.” I explained quickly what our mission was and asked if she remembered what had happened.

“We were away,” her husband said. “When we came back, we heard about it, but it was all over.”

“Do you leave your house locked when you're gone?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” his wife said. “Always. We even have lights that go on and off. Dave jokes that it's to keep the squirrels happy, but I like to think it's a kind of security.”

“Does anyone ever look into your house when you're away?” Betty asked.

“Only if we're gone a month or more, and that doesn't happen very often.”

“Have you ever known a Lawrence Filmore? Larry Filmore and his wife, Laura?” I asked.

They looked at each other. “Never heard the name,” Dave said.

“Me, neither.” Frannie looked at her watch. “I'm sorry, but I've gotta run. I'm on afternoons this week.”

We were still wearing our coats. Frannie put hers on,
grabbed her purse, gave her husband a quick kiss, and the three of us went outside.

“Nice to meet you!” she called, taking off for her car, which was in the driveway next to Betty's. “Hope you find what you're looking for.”

We went into town and had lunch, taking our maps and notes into the coffee shop with us.

“It's very discouraging,” Betty said. “Not that I had any reason to think we'd find something new.”

“Don't be discouraged. We're just starting. We may stumble on information and not be aware that it's relevant right away. But my impression of the three families we've talked to is that they're not suspects. They didn't cringe when I mentioned the name Filmore. Somewhere along the way, someone may.”

“You're right. I'll have to watch their faces when you ask the question. But from what I've seen, we can scratch these three houses from the list. One helped in the search, one doesn't seem likely, and the third was out of town.”