Dear Irene

She brightened. “Well, congratulations! I’ve been married twice myself, and recommend it highly.” Now she was eyeing him from head to toe. “Well, well, well. Well, well, well!”

With each “well,” Frank apparently received a higher approval rating. He was embarrassed by the appraisal process, which in turn forced me into a hopeless struggle to keep a straight face.

“Jimmy Grant?” he asked, as if in pain.

“Oh, yes,” she sobered. “We were talking about poor little Jimmy. Well, I suppose that is exactly what makes the whole thing so sad. Sad and bizarre, if you ask me.”

“Bizarre?”

“Yes, Detective Harriman. Bizarre. A sign of the kind of corruption we had around here in those days. Pauline, as you know, was jailed almost immediately after the Robinson boy died. The mothers of the children at the Olympus Center were divided into two camps, you might say. Those that lined up behind Maggie Robinson were crying for blood. The rest of us felt that the whole thing had been an accident. Her lack of self-control meant Pauline should lose her job, but not her child. And certainly not her freedom.”

“Did Pauline have many supporters?” I asked.

“Oh no. By supporting Pauline, I was in the minority camp. None of us had the kind of money it would take to get her a good lawyer or to help her get out on bail. So she was in custody from the day of the incident on.”

“And Jimmy?”

“As I said, there were no relatives available, so Jimmy was placed into foster care. He was — oh, I hate to say it, but he was a difficult child. He didn’t accept what had happened at all. Blamed himself, in the way children will. When Pauline was sent to prison, he became totally uncontrollable, and there was doubt as to whether he could ever be placed anywhere for long. That’s when Maggie Robinson stepped in.”

“Maggie Robinson?”

“Yes. She somehow finagled it so that she became Jimmy’s foster mother.”

“What?” We asked it in chorus.

“Yes. She had some twisted notion that this was a just solution. I thought it stank. When Pauline was killed, Maggie adopted Jimmy.”

We sat in stunned silence for a moment.

“How was that possible?” I asked.

“J. D. Anderson,” she said.

“The president of Mercury Aircraft?” Frank asked. “What did he have to do with it?”

“Rumors were, Maggie was J.D.’s mistress. For all her other faults — and believe me, you don’t want to sit here while I name them — Maggie was stunningly beautiful.”

I shook my head. “I still don’t understand how that could allow her—”

“To adopt Jimmy? Irene Kelly, you surprise me. At that time, J.D. was one of the most powerful individuals in the Los Angeles area. And while you may believe there is corruption now, back then, things were absolutely rotten. Didn’t Mr. O’Connor ever tell you about what it was like then?”

“Well, yes, but a child—”

“Especially a child. Surely you can see that even now, children have little say over what becomes of them. They’re at the mercy of adults. Adoption has changed now, not so much because of the law, but because of supply and demand, if you will. Abortion rights changed the supply. Back then — remember the recent revelations about the judge who made a small fortune from adoption? She ordered babies removed from their parents’ custody and then accepted payment to place the children with wealthy clients.”

“Wasn’t there anyone who spoke up for him?”

She wrung her hands together. “I’m ashamed to admit it, but no, I didn’t. Maggie wasn’t working at Mercury by then, but we all knew she was J.D.’s kept woman. The rumor I heard was that he had pulled all the strings himself, had even fixed it so that if anybody went looking for Jimmy’s records, they wouldn’t find a thing. As if the kid didn’t exist before he was adopted.”

She paused, then continued in a much lower voice. “The war was over, and lots of women had lost their jobs. At the time, I was the sole source of support for my son. I had never worked before the war. Not as a teacher or a nurse, not even as a waitress. If I lost my job at Mercury, I didn’t have a thing to fall back on. If it had just been me, well, maybe I would have spoken up. But I had Howie to think of, and I stayed silent.”

“I appreciate your telling us now,” Frank said. “You’ve saved me a lot of effort. I’ll have a better idea of how to look for him now. Did you ever see Maggie Robinson after the war?”

“Yes, once I saw her here in town, at a store during a Christmas sale. Must have been two or three years after the war. She seemed quite nervous about the encounter. She tried to avoid me, truth be told. I sort of pushed my way over to her and asked about Jimmy. She looked furious, but she said she didn’t know any Jimmy, and I must have mistaken her for someone else. Then she managed to disappear into the crowd. I never did like that woman.”

“Do you know Hobson Devoe?” I asked.

“Yes, the former head of personnel. I understand he runs the museum out there now.”

“Would he have known about Maggie?”

She frowned. “I’m not certain, of course, but I’d tend to doubt it. Mr. Devoe has always been very active in his church. The other men used to call him ‘The Boy Scout.’ Treated him as something of an innocent — or perhaps I should say, they treated him as if he were prudish. They didn’t tell dirty jokes around him, or use foul language, so I’m sure they didn’t discuss J.D.’s mistresses — according to rumor, J.D. had several. Maggie was certainly not the only one who let J.D. sample her wares, although she was apparently a favorite over many years. I just don’t know. Hobson was a straight arrow, but he wasn’t naive or unable to get what he wanted in the corporation.”