The Christening Day Murder (3 page)

“Was this your house?”

“Right where we’re standing. Raised our kids here. That stump is where my mother planted an acorn about a hundred years ago. Hard to believe that’s been underwater for thirty years.”

“It is.” I placed my palm on it. It felt like any stump that’s been out in the sunshine for its whole life.

“You believe in miracles?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, somewhat embarrassed to be caught in the midst of my own recent crisis of faith.

“Well, I don’t have much longer to live—”

“Don’t say that, Henry,” his wife interrupted.

“—and all I ever wanted was to see my mother’s oak tree and step inside that church once more. Now I’ve done it, I feel ready.”

“You look very healthy, Mr. Degenkamp. I’m sure you have many more years ahead of you.”

He patted his midsection. “Inside is where the trouble is. Can’t see it from the outside.”

“That’s enough, Henry,” his wife said.

“This must have been a wonderful place to grow up,” I said, hoping to turn the conversation away from his health.

“Best place in the world, right, Ellie?”

“It was calm and peaceful and happy,” she said with feeling. “There wasn’t any crime, and the worst thing that happened was once in a while you’d catch a youngster smoking.”

“We had a scandal, though,” her husband said, his eyes twinkling.

“Henry,” his wife said sharply.

“I was just going to tell her about the time the treasurer of the poker club absconded with the funds,” he said smoothly.

Ellie Degenkamp smiled. “He probably didn’t get enough for bus fare to New York.”

“Did they ever catch him?” I asked.

“Nope. He got away with it, the son of a gun.” Henry rubbed his hands together.

“It’s getting chilly,” his wife said.

“Then we’d best be going. We’ll see you at the christening.”

I watched them go, stopping as they went to point at something they saw only in memory. I walked in the direction Henry Degenkamp had pointed, toward the Stifler house. I wasn’t sure where it was, but I stopped at a huge boulder, wondering if it had adorned a lawn once. Using my sneaker sole for traction, I raised myself up and sat on it. Without realizing it, I had walked up a gentle rise from the center of town. The church was near the lowest point, the houses, what was left of them, built on higher ground. But even with low buildings and tall trees, the steeple would have been visible from every part of the village. Certainly from my perch, it was.

I sat for some time thinking about the man who had absconded with the poker funds, and the kids caught smoking. In those days, the crime of smoking meant a cigarette, and the prescribed punishment a trip to the woodshed. Just sitting here made me feel transplanted to another time. Finally the chill that had made itself felt to the more sensitive bodies of the older couple got to me, too, and I jumped off the rock and started back to the hotel.

   The dinner party that evening was pure pleasure. I hadn’t seen Maddie’s parents since I’d entered St. Stephen’s fifteen years earlier, and it was nice to catch up on the intervening years. Little Richie was as good as any baby I’d ever seen,
sleeping peacefully except to wake up on schedule to be nursed by his adoring mother. And Frank Clark, Maddie’s husband, a nice-looking man only slightly older than the two of us, was the typical doting father. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of retelling of old stories, mostly about Studsburg, and a lot of good feeling. I left happy to be part of this warm family reunion.

The Stiflers had managed to track down Father Gregory Hartman, who had baptized Maddie thirty years ago, and he had agreed, without much persuasion, to come to Studsburg for the baptism of young Richard. The day was scheduled to begin at ten with a mass followed by the baptism, and go on to a lunch at the home I had visited for dinner. I intended to stay over Sunday night so that I wouldn’t have to leave the festivities early.

The Degenkamps were already walking around outside the church when I arrived at nine-thirty on Sunday morning. Today they were dressed quite formally, he in a suit, she in a silk dress that peeked out from beneath her coat. We exchanged hellos and Henry said, “Come on over here, I’ll show you something.”

We walked away from the church, leaving his wife behind.

“Here it is.” He rubbed his shoe on the earth. “See over there?” He pointed straight ahead, across the flat part of the town. “That little bridge?”

I had missed it the day before. “Was this a river?”

“A stream that ran right through the middle of town. We
used to fish it when I was a boy, not down here but over that way.” He pointed toward the far edge of the basin. “Trout. Every spring.”

“There isn’t much left of the stream, but that bridge looks pretty sturdy.”

“That’s how they built them, built everything to last. That one over there was on Main Street. Kinda narrow, but no one was in much of a hurry. If a car was coming from the other side, you just waited your turn.”

“Come on, Henry,” Mrs. Degenkamp called. “I want to sit where I can see what’s going on.”

“We’re coming,” he called back, and together we went into the church.

The Stiflers and Clarks had had several rows of chairs and kneeling pads placed in the front of the church, and two young men were making sure that only invited guests had first choice. A number of visitors clustered in the rear, and several people had already found seats up front. The priest was shaking hands with a few in the front row, an unexpected reunion. Maddie had told me that a number of former Studsburgers had been invited, her mother and grandmother having kept up with them. There were more than the usual number of gray heads and more than the usual exclamations of surprise as people recognized one another.

I waited at the side till Maddie entered the church, then joined her. Frank insisted I sit in the first row with them, and I did so happily. As we approached, the Degenkamps looked around and stood to hug and kiss the Stiflers and then ooh and ahh over Maddie and her baby. The last time they had seen Maddie, she was the size of little Richie.

Promptly at ten, without benefit of music, Father Hartman began the mass. When it concluded, Richard Clark in his magnificent white christening dress was baptized a Catholic.

Father Hartman came to the luncheon and regaled us with tales of Studsburg as it once was. He had spent only six years in the town and was now, I estimated, in his late sixties, a tall, good-looking man with graying hair and dark eyes. To
hear him tell it, those were the six best years of his life. In fact, to hear any of them tell it, Studsburg was the kind of town you could only love. It was a place of contentment, a town where people knew and trusted one another.

At some point during the afternoon, Maddie’s cousin hauled out an old photograph album and passed it around. There in black and white was the last day of Studsburg’s official existence, the Fourth of July, the christening day of Madeleine Stifter Clark, wearing the very same dress her son was wearing today. When the book was finally passed to me, I turned the pages slowly, identifying young Father Hartman, the Degenkamps in their fifties, not their eighties, Maddie’s cousins, her mother, almost a wisp of a girl. All were seated at picnic tables somewhere outside the church. The woman sitting next to me on the sofa kept looking over, pointing out faces and attaching names to them. Further along there were snapshots of fireworks as the town celebrated its final moments and the birth of their country. When I was finished, I noticed that the crowd was thinning. It was late afternoon.

I passed along the album and stood. Mrs. Stifter told me Maddie was upstairs nursing the baby, and I found her in a bedroom.

“This is wonderful, Maddie,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Don’t tell me you’re leaving. I won’t let you.”

“I want to get a last look at Studsburg before I go. It could start to rain tomorrow and the whole town could be underwater by summer.”

“Come back and see us tonight, Kix. I’ve hardly had a chance to talk to you.”

“OK.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, I promise. This was such a wonderful idea, Maddie. I hope Richie gets to see St. Mary Immaculate when he’s old enough to appreciate it.”

Maddie smiled and touched the little face with her finger. “It’s been a little ovewhelming,” she admitted, “but I’m
glad we did it. Go,” she ordered. “And don’t forget to come back.”

   There was only one car parked at the edge of the town when I got there, a beat-up old blue something-or-other. The afternoon had become cold and I was a little sorry I hadn’t gone back to the hotel to change but I wanted to see the town while there was still a remnant of daylight. I pulled my shoes off and put on the sneakers I had had in the car all day. Then I started for the church.

The chairs had all been removed and the sanctuary was clean and empty. Usually when I visit a church I light three candles, for my mother, my father, and my Aunt Meg. I was sorry I hadn’t thought ahead and brought some, but at that moment, a gust of wind blew through the windowless openings, chilling me and letting me know my candles would not have survived.

I walked around the left side where the boys had been cleaning yesterday and found the door to the priest’s sacristy as I had anticipated. Just outside it was a curving flight of stone steps leading, I supposed, to the basement. I took my flashlight out of my bag and started down. The dank, fishy smell was more pronounced and I almost turned back, but the knowledge that this was the only chance I would have to see it kept me going. There was debris on the stairs and I walked carefully, shining the light just enough ahead that I could see my way.

At the bottom, a low-ceilinged hall ran to my right, curving along the rear of the building. Almost immediately I came to a doorway. From the little light that entered through the high windows, I could tell this was the hall where meetings and bingo games took place. Like the upstairs, it had been stripped of the stage that would have been built at one end. The floor here was slimy underfoot, and I walked carefully back to the hallway. Suddenly I heard a little ping, as though something small like a coin had fallen on the concrete
floor. I stopped and flashed my light farther ahead, but I couldn’t see much because of the curve of the building.

“Hello,” I called. “Anyone there?”

In answer, I heard a metallic clatter, as though someone were gathering up tools, and then the footsteps of someone running.

“Who’s there?” I called. But the footsteps were already hurriedly mounting the stairs at the far end of the hall. I kept walking. I passed another doorway, probably the furnace room. I raised my flashlight and saw the stone stairs along the far wall. Lowering the beam, I spotted something on the floor near the interior wall that supported the stairs. It looked like one of the rectangular stones that formed the walls down here. I wondered if it had become loose from thirty years underwater.

But it didn’t appear that way. There were chunks of mortar on the ground around the stone, as though someone had just dug it out. When I had nearly reached it, my light caught something gold on the floor. I picked it up and pocketed it. Then I sat on my heels and pointed the flashlight into the opening under the stairs.

I drew in my breath and said, “Oh no,” and at the same moment, I crossed myself.

Inside the exposed opening, dirty and fleshless, was all that remained of a body that had been underwater for three decades.

It was surely the first time in a long time that Studsburg had seen flashing lights and tan uniforms. I had had to go back to the motel to find a telephone, and after calling the police, I telephoned Maddie to tell her what happened. When I got back to the church, Mr. and Mrs. Stifler were just arriving.

Mrs. Stifler looked frightened. “Maddie said you found a body, Kix. Is it someone we know? A guest of ours?”

“I think it’s someone who was killed before Studsburg was flooded,” I said. “I’d better find the police. They’ll want to know how I found it.” I excused myself and went into the church.

It was the sheriff’s department that had responded to my call, and deputies had already cordoned off the two stairways with long strips of yellow plastic bearing the ongoing inscription
CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS
, but the man at the top of one let me through when I identified myself. At the foot of the stairs, two uniformed men were on the floor peering into the opening in the wall.

“I’m Christine Bennett,” I said. “I called in the report.”

“Deputy Drago,” one of the men said, rising to his feet. “Thanks for dropping by. I’d like to write down anything you can tell me while it’s fresh in your mind.”

I retraced my brief walk down the far stairs, into the meeting room, and down the hall, recalling the sound of tools clanging and of running footsteps.

“Man or woman?” he asked.

“I didn’t see, but if I had to guess, I’d say a man. It sounded kind of heavy. It certainly wasn’t a woman in heels.”

“That’s a pretty heavy stone for a woman to move. So you didn’t see him at all?”

“Not even a shadow. He must have heard me—” I looked down at my sneakers and shook my head “—or maybe he saw the beam of my flashlight. No, wait a minute. I heard him and I called hello.”

“He answer?”

“No, he ran.”

“You always carry a flashlight?” he asked.

I took it out of my bag. It was small and lightweight. “I need it sometimes at night.”

“You touch anything there?”

“Nothing. I just got down to look in the opening, and then I got up and left to call you.”

He looked down at his notes. “You said there was a car parked at the edge of the town when you got there. Was it still there when you left?”

“It was gone.”

“Did the person you heard go up the stairs have enough time to get to a car while you were down here?”

I had thought of that on my way over. “I don’t think so, but I’m not sure.”

“You didn’t by any chance see or hear the car leave, did you?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“So this guy could’ve left on foot, and some other person might have been walking around town while you were down here.”