“Okay,” said Rita, not flinching or indicating she knew where this was going.
Odelia took a deep breath and plunged in. “He found a skeleton stuck in the wall. A skeleton that must have been there for several decades.”
Rita’s eyes went wide and she brought a hand to her face. “Oh, no,” she said.
“I think it’s your father, Rita. In fact, I’m almost positive that it is.”
“Dad,” said Rita in a hoarse whisper. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah. So I expect my uncle to pay you a visit as soon as they’ve made a positive ID, but I figured I owe it to you to give the news personally, as we have a connection and I…”
Rita nodded, speechless, her eyes brimming with tears. “Thanks,” she said.
“Do you have any idea how he could have ended up down there?” she asked.
Rita was shaking her head, still making valiant efforts to control herself. “No,” she said finally. “I mean, someone must have put him there, right? If it’s really him, someone must have…” She blinked and reached for the box of Kleenex on the coffee table. “I never thought he ran away, like Mom thought. He was too loving a father to do that to us.”
“Your mom thought he ran away?”
“She did. He’d gotten into some trouble at work. I don’t remember the details. Also there was talk about a fight he had with a work friend over a loan or something. So the police at the time thought he’d run away when he realized he couldn’t repay the loan. Dad worked with some unsavory characters, and some of those fellas wouldn’t have taken kindly to not being repaid when someone borrowed money from them, so…”
“But you never believed that.”
“No, I didn’t. Dad loved me—loved us. We were a very warm, loving family, and he wouldn’t simply leave us. Just… vanish without a trace and not give us a sign of life for all those years. Mom died not knowing what had happened to him, you know, and until the very end she wondered—we all did, actually. Me, Mom and my brother.”
“Tom. Does he still live around here?”
“Brooklyn. He’s a Wall Street guy. He’s retired now, though. In fact he’s thinking about giving up his apartment and permanently moving back to Hampton Cove. One of the downstairs flats is up for sale, and he’s seriously considering putting down an offer.” She wiped at her eyes. “Oh, Odelia. Whatever I expected when I saw your face on the intercom just now, it definitely wasn’t this.”
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of such bad news,” said Odelia ruefully.
“It’s not bad news,” said Rita with a brave smile. “It’s good news. Now I know Dad never left us. Now I know what really happened, and how he was with us all this time.”
“Yeah, he was right there,” said Odelia softly.
“Amazing,” said Rita as she gave this some more thought. “How he was right beneath our feet all these years, and we didn’t know.” She directed a resolute look at Odelia. “You’re a private detective, aren’t you?”
“Um, not really. I’m a reporter for the Hampton Cove Gazette.”
“But you do some private detecting on the side, right?”
“I don’t have a license, so it’s not official,” she said. “I help out my uncle and my boyfriend from time to time. Civilian consultant, they call it.” She had a feeling Rita was working towards something, and she had a pretty good idea what it could be.
“Can you find out what happened to my dad? Please? For my sake and Tom’s? Someone must have put him inside that wall, right? He didn’t crawl in there all by himself and brick himself in, did he?”
“No, I don’t think he did,” said Odelia, treading carefully now. “It seems very unlikely that he would have done such a thing.”
“Exactly. So he was murdered. Someone killed him and had the gall—the impudence—to bury him in his own house, right under our noses—underneath the feet of his wife and family. Please find out who did it, Odelia. I don’t have a lot of money, but I’ll talk to Tom. He has some money saved up, and I’m sure he’ll agree with me to hire you.”
“No, please, Rita,” said Odelia, holding up her hand. “I’m not going to accept any money from you. I’ll look into your father’s death, not for money, but because I want to know, too. You see, people in this town like to gossip, and already they’re talking about my grandmother being the one who put that body there. So it’s important for me to find out what really happened, and to prove Gran innocent.”
“Your gran! How could she possibly be involved?”
“Oh, you know what people are like. Gran went through an acrimonious divorce back in the day, and then my grandfather died, so now they think she killed him and—”
“Buried him in the basement? That’s ludicrous. Your grandmother didn’t even live there back then. We lived there, and continued living there for many years afterward.”
“Exactly, which is why…” She swallowed. “Can I show you something?”
“Of course. I’m sorry for being so emotional,” said Rita, who seemed more composed now. “It’s been a long time, and I always thought I was over my dad’s disappearance, but this was a big surprise, and it’s going to be a big surprise for my brother, too.”
Odelia took out her phone and showed Rita a picture of the skeleton she’d taken.
The woman sat stony-faced for a moment, then burst out, “Oh, my poor daddy.”
“I’m sorry,” said Odelia, then flicked through to the picture of the brooch she’d taken. “Do you have any idea what this could be? It was found at the same spot.”
Rita took Odelia’s phone, and pinched the picture out with her fingers, making it bigger. “It looks like a brooch of some kind,” she said.
“It is. It looks very valuable. Diamonds, probably.”
Rita shook her head. “I’ve never seen it before. Definitely not ours. Dad was a gardener, and Mom was a stay-at-home mom until after he disappeared. We weren’t rich. And definitely not diamond-brooch rich.”
“So you have no idea how it could have ended up buried along with your father?”
“No idea,” said Rita, and Odelia could see that the woman wasn’t lying. She had absolutely no idea what that brooch was, or where it had come from.
Odelia put her phone away. “Thank you so much, Rita. Now, to get me launched on the investigation, tell me everything you can remember about your father’s final days, weeks, or even months. Anything you think might shed light on his disappearance.”
“On his murder,” said Rita quietly. “Yes, of course. Anything you need. Anything at all.”
Chapter 15
“You see, we were a loving and a warm family, as I’ve already said, but of course, like in any family, there were tensions,” Rita said as she got up. “Do you want some tea? I don’t know if you remember this, but I’m an expert on weird herbal concoctions.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Odelia, who did remember. And as Rita disappeared into the kitchen, she threw her mind back to the time Rita Baker had been her neighbor. She distinctly remembered Rita as a cool neighbor, who never failed to say hi, or to babysit when Mom and Dad went out on the weekends. Rita had quickly become a friend of the family, and Odelia had been in and out of her house often, spending many a night on the couch watching TV together. She remembered her as warm-hearted and fun. Happy to babysit because she didn’t have kids herself, even though she always wanted them. She never married, though, and the family she’d hoped to have never materialized. She had boyfriends, though, which Odelia would see sitting out on the deck having breakfast in the morning. Whenever Rita babysat she would never have a boyfriend over, though. She was strict that way, which is why Marge and Tex entrusted her with their kid so much.
“So I have the usual, rosehip and linden and chamomile,” said Rita, offering her a selection of teas. “And then I have my special blends,” she added with a smile, and spirited a second box into her hands. “This is the stuff I keep for special occasions.”