04.Final Edge v5 Read online

  "Or she on him for favors."

  Lauralie stood almost a head taller than any of her classmates. In both photos, she wore an expressionless face, but her eyes rose up from the flat page and seemed to bum with a strange, penetrating radiance. Dark-skinned, exotic in appearance, she might pass for Mexican or Indian. When Lucas asked about her nationality, William said, "Mexican... she was Mexican and Caucasian."

  "No, Father Will, she was Irish on her mother's side, Croombs, and a mix of Mexican and Native American on her father's side."

  "Croombs?" asked Meredyth.

  "She showed me her father's photo once, and a photo of the woman she had located, Katherine Croombs. Quite the Caucasian, looked like the Irish stereotype."

  Lucas and Meredyth thanked the woman again for her time and hospitality as they prepared to leave. Mother Elizabeth, forgiving them their trespasses against Father William, suddenly insisted that they must remain for the dinner meal, 'To see how well the children prepare the meal, wait the tables, and clean up afterwards."

  Meredyth begged off, saying they hoped to get to the county clerk's office before the Children and Family Services Department shut down for the evening. "As it is, we may not make it."

  "All the more reason to stay for the meal. Father William always stays for dinner."

  The mother superior had earlier asked Father William to replace the holy water in the fount, and he'd seemed anxious to fulfill her wish and had eagerly gone to the front vestibule for the chore. Lucas went to Father William now and asked, "You have no idea of Lauralie' s current whereabouts? Where we might find her? We really need to ask her a few routine questions."

  "Sorry...as Mother Elizabeth can tell you, none of us have seen or heard from Lauralie in months."

  "She was a pretty girl, Father."

  "All children are beautiful in the eyes of the Lord, Detective."

  "I'm sure they are." Lucas put a mental note in the back of his head to talk to Rachel again someday about Father William. Instinct told Lucas that the man was not the saint he purported to be, and that perhaps Rachel and others here were not so demure as they were frightened.

  Lucas and Meredyth left, to Mother Elizabeth's and Sister Audrey's smiles and waving of hands as Lucas pulled from the lot, Sister Audrey again electronically opening and closing the gate.

  "Place is like a small castle missing a drawbridge and a moat," said Lucas. "There must be ways in and out the students alone know about."

  "What're you suggesting? That we have the church staked out?"

  "Maybe..."

  "Whoever's playing games with us, she knows the lay of the grounds here, the ins and outs, and Rachel mans the kitchen door. Suppose Rachel is still being dominated by Lauralie. Suppose Rachel's suspicion that Mother Orleans's accident was no accident is true. Maybe the fire was no accident either, but a first attempt on the old mother nun's life? Rachel might make an excellent witness for the prosecution if Lauralie is as involved in the abduction and death of Mira Lourdes as she seems to be."

  "Where is Lauralie?"

  "I'd like to get Rachel out of that place and into a real interrogation room downtown."

  "Rachel knows a lot, agreed. Like someone who has spent her entire life here should know."

  "And I'm telling you now, Mere, there's something not kosher with that priest. He may deserve a great deal more thrashing than I gave him."

  "He did seem odd, defensive, especially when you were strangling him with his own robes!" She laughed recalling the image.

  Both Meredyth and Lucas felt great relief at passing from the church grounds and back into the world of the city of Houston. "Poor Rachel," Meredyth said. "I feel like we ought to've hidden her in the trunk of the car and rescued her from all those characters."

  "I know...me too, but then that'd be agin the law."

  "Mother Elizabeth is a strange mix of strength, intelligence, and naivete, isn't she?"

  "I think her heart's in the right place, but no one's playing by her rules, not really."

  "Behind those bars, she's created a fanciful fantasy existence, a place apart for her separate peace, yet she's convinced herself that she's preparing those girls for the real world."

  "Still, I liked her. Heart of gold. I been searching for a heart of gold...and I'm growin' old," he sang out.

  MEREDYTH INSISTED THEY try to make the downtown courthouse before closing time, but Lucas replied, "In this traffic, no way we can make it before the offices close. We may as well call it a day, Mere."

  "Damn it, Lucas, I can't recall if there was an infant named Lauralie Blodgett or Lauralie Croombs as one of my first cases or not. But given the mounting coincidences, I'm assuming I did handle the case. It's got to be why I've been targeted by this maniac, and Lauralie has got to be at the center of it all. Maybe the Post-it Killer is her boyfriend; maybe he has made promises to her."

  "Promises?"

  "Promises to help her wreak revenge on me. She could be the brains behind the hand of this Frankenstein."

  "Why target me then?"

  "Because, Lucas, they've gone to school on me, so they know all about me and my surroundings, my likes and dislikes, and so they know I'm...that is, that we are close, and by hurting you, they know they hurt me."

  "Is that an admission of love?" he asked.

  "A great and abiding fondness with a capital F," she replied.

  He laughed at this and drove on. After ten minutes of silence, he said, "You know me, Mere. I don't normally leap to assumptions and conclusions on a case, but it's increasingly clear that someone, most likely this Lauralie someone, has it in for you so badly that it borders on a kind of religious abhorrence she has against you."

  "To've mailed those body parts to us, and to've placed that severed finger for me to find in the holy water...Indeed it is a furious hatred she's harboring for me."

  'True whether she's done all of this herself, in person, or has had others following her orders. Kinda like you!" he joked.

  "She certainly knows how to control people."

  "Yeah, even men of the cloth like Father William."

  "You really didn't like Father William, did you?"

  "Call it an instant dislike."

  "But how do you see him helping Lauralie—or whoever is behind Mira Lourdes's death and mutilation?"

  "Small favors, I suspect, for sexual favors perhaps. I get a bird-of-prey kind of thing coming off that beak-nosed priest. He curries favors with all the girls, I suspect, but maybe Lauralie became too much for him to handle. I get the feeling he's damned glad he hasn't seen her in some time and doesn't know her whereabouts and wants to keep it that way."

  "That's quite a leap, Lucas."

  "Suspicious mind of mine has kept me alive this long."

  "Well, one thing I believe we can agree on is that our female courier is not so innocent. The finger was not tucked away in a box. She knew what she was defiling the holy water with."

  "Which means that our Post-it Ripper is not a he but a they, a couple out to panic Houston, and bent on destroying you and me in the bargain, like...like a jealous lover."

  "I know it'll only sound paranoid to anyone looking at the circumstances from the outside," Meredyth said. "Hell, as a shrink, I'd say the same thing of someone coming to me with a story as convoluted and crazed as this...but after all, it was a man-and-woman team who abducted Mira Lourdes, and why Lourdes, if not to make a point with the convent? And-and, Lucas, why'd they mark the return address on the first parcel to you as Our Lady of—" She stopped herself in mid-sentence, pondering something new.

  "What is it, Mere?" he asked, stopping at a light.

  "The other return address, the mortician's. They're a twenty-four-hour business, right?"

  "Yeah, it's over on Lowe near Clinton, off the canal...a commercial district. What're you thinking?"

  "I'm thinking a lot of people have tragically died around Lauralie Blodgett. A few years ago it was her mother superior, and this year her birth moth
er. So where do you suppose her mother's body went for burial if not that return address on Lowe?"

  "I hope they have better record-keeping skills than the sisters of Our Lady of Miracles."

  Lucas turned the car in the direction of the mortuary.

  MORTE DE ARTHUR'S was the first and only mortuary Lucas had ever seen that sported a neon sign, but within they found a clean, well-lit, marble-floored, darkly paneled place of real mahogany walls, all polished and kept from the original mortuary on this spot, likely in business for most of the century before losing out to economic hard times and family illness and death. They also learned on the inside that the new proprietors, Giorgio and Carlotta Fellini, did keep better records than did the convent school. They were quickly able to locate a burial service for a Carmilla Blodgett, a Walter D. Blodgett, a Terrence K. Blodgett, and more recently a John D. Blodgett.

  "No Katherine Croombs Blodgett?" Meredyth asked, shaking her head.

  "Sony. If it ain't there," said Carlotta, "then we didn't handle her."

  Meredyth scanned the John Blodgett card and read aloud. "John D. Blodgett, aged fifty-two. Amer. Indian/Mexican male. Height 62", weight 210 lbs. Generic service. Determination of death: heart attack. Survived by common law wife, Katherine Croombs, and daughter Lauralie. Services and burial at Greenhaven Meadows Cemetery held May 4, 1997."

  "Bingo! It's her!" shouted Lucas.

  "Yes, she's on Blodgett's card as his wife and Lauralie's down as his daughter."

  Lucas examined the card. The date of Blodgett's funeral and burial at Greenhaven Cemetery predated Giorgio and Carlotta's taking over the business. "Greenhaven...Blodgett. The vandalized gravesite Kelton learned about? It's got to be him, Lauralie's father."

  "So where was Katherine's body taken?"

  'Try the C's," suggested Lucas.

  Meredyth then thumbed through the three-by-five cards under the Cs, and there she located a Katherine Anne Croombs who had been embalmed and prepared for burial here. "It's her, Lauralie's mother, Lucas. It's got to be Lauralie behind all this. She's leaving all these telltale signs."

  "Bread-crumb trail. She wants to get caught."

  "More likely, she wants us to know her motives."

  "If it's not her, someone's going to a hell of a lot of trouble to make us believe it's her."

  "Like wily Father William Stoughton, you mean?"

  "It may sound far-fetched, but suppose she's got something on him. Suppose he needs to incriminate her in order to get out from under any charges she could now, or in the future, bring against him."

  "Molestation charges? Maybe you've got something there."

  "Lot of temptation for a man in that place, and a lot of nooks and crannies to do something about it in, if you ask me."

  "You do have a dirty mind, Lucas."

  "No, a detective's mind is all."

  'Take nothing at face value, huh?"

  The mortuary record cards were arranged in alphabetical order and then by date of burial. John Blodgett and the other three Blodgetts, all of mixed Native American and Mexican descent, all predated the change in management. "All these Blodgetts were likely related. I wonder why someone in the family couldn't have taken Lauralie out of that convent to return to the family."

  "Crack baby, remember? Mother without direction or goals. Father unavailable. All we know, John Blodgett never knew he had a daughter. If so, no one in his family would have known either."

  "I'm sure Family Services didn't bother to find out."

  Her face flushed red as if he'd slapped her. She turned to the bookkeeper, wife, co-owner, and asked, "Carlotta, were all these Blodgetts related?"

  Carlotta shrugged. "No way to be sure. They were all serviced by Xavier and Sons, before we came."

  "Before the advent of Morte de Arthur's—translated— the Death of Arthur's," replied Lucas, thinking, Before the Xaviers sold out to a tastelessly run franchise.

  Lucas next took the card on Katherine Croombs from Meredyth and read the words. "Katherine Anne Croombs, age thirty-seven, Caucasian female, 5'9", 180 lbs. Catholic service. Determination of death: alcoholic overdose w/ ambien pills. Ms. Croombs is survived by a daughter, Lauralie Blodgett. Services and burial held at Greenhaven Meadows Berwyn Cemetery, July 20th, 2004."

  On the back of the card, the remaining information summed Katherine's life up to a last known address. An address for Lauralie was given as 1386 Ravenswood, Chicago, Illinois. The mother's address was on North Groiler.

  "Alcoholic poisoning, just as Mother Elizabeth said," Meredyth almost whispered.

  "She didn't say anything about sleeping pills. Man, the lady was only a couple of years older than us, Mere."

  "Do you suppose Lauralie is living at Katherine's address?"

  "It's certainly worth our while to find out."

  "Stakeout?"

  "I think we have enough for a warrant to search. I'll make the call." Lucas went for his car radio, leaving Meredyth in the mortuary office with Carlotta Fellini, the proprietor.

  "Do you recall anything at all about the daughter?" Meredyth asked the flamboyantly dressed, heavyset, buxom Carlotta, who acted as secretary and gofer for her husband, Giorgio. When Lucas and Meredyth had first arrived, Mr. Fellini, according to the name tag on his lapel, had greeted them at the door. Giorgio—in black bow tie against a ruffled baby-blue shirt beneath a navy-blue blazer a size too small, his ruffled cuffs flitting about on nervous wings at seeing Lucas's gold shield—had sent them to the office to speak to his wife about records. Giorgio was in the middle of a wake just the other side of the door.

  Carlotta stopped chewing her gum at Meredyth's question, as if doing so might help her think. "I remember her, sure. Flirtatious bitch...all over my Giorgio. And cheap, paid in cash, said little, no tears...showed no emotion at all." The emphatic at all was condemnation and curse rolled into one in Carlotta jargon.

  "Anything else you recall, anything at all?"

  Carlotta's jaws worked the gum again. "Let me get Giorgio in here. He dealt with her more'n I did. I just took her money."

  "Did she say she was staying at her mother's address on Ravenswood?" Meredyth held up the file card to her.

  "Said she was at some Best Western, I think. Said she had come in from out of town to make arrangements is all. She left an out-of-town address, Chicago. It's on the card."

  Meredyth had already jotted the two addresses down on a notepad she carried with her. She imagined the Chicago address a fake, a dead end. Certainly, Lauralie was closer than Chicago, and like Lucas, Meredyth wondered if sweet daughter Lauralie had perhaps taken up residence at Mom's old place.

  Carlotta buzzed Giorgio on his pager, and Lucas reentered the office alongside Giorgio, who, smiling beneath his handlebar mustache, greeted them as if meeting them for the first time. "How much more can we help you?" he asked, his arms expansively opening to them, his smile a commercial habit.

  Meredyth showed him the three-by-five card and asked, "Do you recall anything at all, sir, about the daughter?"

  "Was she with anyone to lean on, a man?" asked Lucas.

  "No, alone she was...all alone. I recall how sad that was, but she was stern, you know, like a rock"—he held out a fist to emphasize this point—"how do you say it, stoic...yes, stoic. Said her mother was a lifelong alcoholic, a victim of her chosen lifestyle, and as sad as it was, you know, a wasted life, that her overdosing came as no surprise to her, the daughter, I mean."

  "That was her attitude? Matter-of-fact?" asked Lucas.

  "She was under a lot of stress...depressed, you know," said Giorgio. "It is common under the circumstances of a death in the family. It is something I see every day."

  Carlotta, who obviously did not work the wakes, wore a multicolored neck scarf, a halter top, and jeans. Hearing Giorgio's words, she leaped to her feet and came around from behind her desk like a charging bull, getting into Giorgio's face, shaking her head and waving a stem index finger. "She wasn't all that broke up, Giorgio! Don't con
fuse a stone-cold heart with honest depression!"

  "You are too harsh, Carlotta!"

  "She took you, Giorgio! We lost on that service, thanks to your thinking with your little head!" She said to Lucas, "That tramp was stone cold and cheap and flirting with my man the whole time. You...you men!"

  Giorgio piped in. "Flirting? Come on! Yeah, all right, she was cool perhaps, and cheap, sure. I give you that, but she said the trip to get here on a moment's notice had emptied her bank account, and that she had only come in to bury her mother. I told her all about our memory-preservation and plot-maintenance programs, you know, how we send out anniversary cards with Mom or Dad's picture each year on the date of death, and how we keep up the grounds, place flowers on the grave every other week, but—"

  "—but she wanted no frills, just the pine-box special," finished Carlotta. "She went all out for dear ol' Mom," Carlotta facetiously added. "She walked in here wanting to pay nothing, and short of that, as little as possible. And when I told her how easy it would be to take the maintenance plan out of her credit card each month, she said she didn't do credit cards. I had to pry a home address out of her."

  "Did you see what kind of vehicle she arrived in?"

  " 'Fraid not," replied Giorgio.

  "And at the funeral service?"

  "Arrived in a cab."

  "Alone or with a man?"

  "Alone, always alone, she was."

  Carlotta let out a low growl like an angry cat. "All I know, she kept coming onto you, Giorgio, to get the price down, and you dummy, you let her. She got a sweet deal on a plot out at Berwyn too, I can tell you."

  "Is this her?" asked Meredyth, flashing the open yearbook before the pair.

  "Ahhh...hmmm..." hedged the man. "She was older, sexier. No kid like this," he emphasized, as if to say he didn't chase kids.

  His wife disagreed. "It's her in the picture, Giorgio, only not wearing that skintight dress she came in here with."

  "Yeah, if Carlotta says it's her, it's her. She's got a thing for faces."

  Carlotta laughed. "And you, you got a thing for asses."

  "Hey, so I got a thing for bodies—ain't it my business? Look around you, Carlotta. Come on, I'm jokin' here. Don't you get it?" Giorgio's arms went up and out, the ruffled cuffs flitting like two downy birds as he spoke. In an aside to Lucas, he winked. "Get it, my business? Bods?"