Free The Thanksgiving Day Murder by Lee Harris

cough medicine she’d gotten about a month earlier. So I’d guess she was in pretty good health.”
    “I assume there were no positive responses from the hospitals.”
    “Nothing. The detective working on the case, a Tony DiRoma, went out to New Jersey himself and talked to the neighbors.”
    “Because he figured Sandy killed her.”
    “It’s what happens, Chris. But he seemed pretty satisfied they had a good marriage. No one ever saw her with bruises, no one heard screams or arguments, she always looked happy, chatted with neighbors.”
    “I’m glad to hear it. What did DiRoma do in New York?”
    “He talked to the doormen on Central Park West and asked if they’d seen anything, and the answer was a pretty conclusive no.”
    “Did he go to her last job?”
    “Hopkins and Something? He called.”
    “He didn’t go and talk to people?”
    “She hadn’t worked there for a while, Chris. They told him everybody liked her and no one knew anything.”
    “Did he go to the building she lived in before she was married?”
    “Doesn’t look like it. He’d need a reason for that, Chris.”
    “Someone there might have known her.”
    “So what? They’re not looking to write a life story, they’re looking for a kidnapper. Anyway, DiRoma was transferred to another job about six months later and a new detective took over, Evelyn Hogan.”
    “Interesting. She do anything?”
    “Looks like she did. She reviewed the file and checked up on Sandy. What did you do to this chicken?”
    “What do you mean?” I asked in terror.
    “It’s great. I thought you said you couldn’t roast a chicken.”
    “Melanie said anyone could roast a chicken and she told me exactly what to do.”
    “It’s fantastic. You used rosemary.”
    I glowed. “Isn’t it a wonderful smell?”
    “Yup, I think I’m going to retire as chief cook in this house.”
    “Please don’t do that.”
    “Competition’s getting pretty keen around here.”
    “I’ll go back to convent stew.”
    He looked at me and I laughed. The food at St. Stephen’s had been very good, cooked by nuns who enjoyed cooking and who had their specialties.
    “Well, I wasn’t planning on giving up my title just yet.”
    “What’s for tomorrow?”
    “I’ll think about it tonight. Haven’t had lamb for a while, have we?”
    “That sounds good. Want to hear my day?”
    “I’m all ears.”
    —
    I went through my morning conversation with Sandy and then what Susan Hartswell had told me, omitting her food and drink concerns. He raised his eyebrows when I saidNatalie had confided she might be pregnant and Sandy had likely not been told. Then I went through the Hopkins and Jewell episode. When I got to the missing personnel files, he interrupted for the first time.
    “That really stretches the limits of credibility,” he said. “It’s not as if she’d been gone for twenty-five years. It was only a year or two. And you said it’s a small place. How many files could they have accumulated?”
    “Is any of the stuff I asked for in the police file?”
    “None of it. But again, they weren’t interested in her work history.”
    “And they started out with a bias,” I said.
    “Probably.”
    I told him the rest and I watched his interest increase as I came to the end, the woman I couldn’t talk to because she didn’t exist, the man named Steve following me out of the building.
    “So they’re holding something back,” Jack said.
    “They are, I’m sure of it. But what? Why would they dispose of her personnel records? What on earth could they say that Hopkins and Jewell wouldn’t want me to know? Or wouldn’t want the police to know?”
    “Beats me. But I think you’re on to something.”
    “Should I tell Sandy Natalie may have been pregnant?”
    “I thought you were the half that decided moral issues.”
    I had done it before, deciding to withhold information from a family when that information could only cause them anguish and could cause no one any good.