Lefebvre, who was an ace detective, but known as a loner in the department and not overly fond of the media. And Lefebvre was smiling at her. Jesus. She didn’t need his help.
Here he was, overly warm in his suit, his shoes and trousers covered with dirt from hiking in the long way, holding a cardboard box under one arm- looking like a peddler, and for what? To tell her that Jack had seen the car buried? Might as well leave her a note.
He was about to turn back when she saw him. Lefebvre saw him, too. Lefebvre’s smile quickly went to a frown.
He watched her face, could swear that for just a moment she looked dismayed-maybe even hurt? No, that couldn’t be. And then she was smiling and beckoning to him.
A brave sort of smile. Lefebvre, far from a fool, was looking between them now.
O’Connor thought about the box, about Jack, and put on one of his own brave smiles as he trudged forward in the soft dusty earth to where they stood.
“Phil,” Irene said, “you must already know the best reporter on the Express. O’Connor will be taking over from here. Thanks for everything.”
“Wait!” O’Connor and Lefebvre protested in unison. (Had she, some part of O’Connor’s mind wondered, really called Lefebvre Phil?)
“I’m not taking over a thing,” O’Connor said. “It’s your story. I’m just here to ask if I might be of help.”
Lefebvre was looking at the box. “Why are you carrying a box with the word ‘jerk’ written on it?”
“It doesn’t say ‘jerk,’” Irene said. “It says ‘Jack,’ right?”
“Yes, but I think you’re the first person to read it correctly.”
“All right,” Lefebvre said, “why are you carrying a box with the name ‘Jack’ written on it?”
“Because, Detective Lefebvre, on behalf of a fellow named Jack, I’ve been looking for that buried car for twenty years.”
28
B RIAN O’MALLEY LET US BORROW HIS OFFICE. THE CONSTRUCTION TRAILER was roomy, but the tension between O’Connor and Lefebvre seemed to shrink it.
O’Connor set his dusty cardboard box down next to me, but instead of sitting, he leaned against the dark paneling on one of the office walls. I was itching to open up the box and have a look through its contents.
Lefebvre relaxed a little when we agreed that anything he told us about the scene-anything I hadn’t seen myself-would, for the time being, be off the record.
“What did you see?” O’Connor asked me.
I described the remains. O’Connor’s face lost all color about halfway through my account. When I said the couple appeared to be in evening clothes of some sort, his attention suddenly sharpened. When I added that I thought I had seen a few diamonds on the floor of the trunk, he suddenly sat down on the other side of the box and buried his face in his hands.
I stopped talking and looked at Phil Lefebvre.
Lefebvre looked at me, then back to O’Connor.
“You know who they are,” Lefebvre said.
O’Connor nodded. Without raising his head, he said in a strained voice, “Lillian Vanderveer Linworth’s daughter, Katy. Katy Ducane and her husband, Todd. My God…”
“They drowned twenty years ago,” I said, baffled. “That’s what Kyle said, anyway.”
“Kyle?” Lefebvre asked.
“Kyle Yeager. He’s called Max Ducane now,” I said quickly, seeing O’Connor look up and afraid that we were going to end up arguing about Kyle.
“Ah, yes,” Lefebvre said. “The new multimillionaire. I’ve read the stories in the Express about the… missing heir. As I recall, the bodies of the Ducanes- the younger Ducanes-were never found, right?”
“Not until now,” O’Connor said, his voice still unsteady.
“You’re so sure?”
So O’Connor told us the story of the night Corrigan saw the car buried, of going through the murder scene at the Ducanes’ mansion with Detective Norton, and learning that Lillian had given Katy the Vanderveer diamonds that night. Of finding a body in a swamp, and another in the mountains. “Eventually Dan Norton admitted that even if the Ducanes drowned by accident-which I never believed-Jack’s beating was connected to the disappearance of the child and the murder of the maid.”
“You were bothered by something other than the timing?” Lefebvre asked.
“Yes, because we were able to connect Bo Jergenson, the giant, with Gus Ronden, whose body we found in the mountains. And when Norton and his men looked through Ronden’s house here in Las Piernas, they found blood on clothes in his laundry hamper that matched the blood type of Rose Hannon, the murdered maid. And he found the knife Ronden presumably used.”
“But since Ronden also ended up murdered,” Lefebvre said, “Norton wasn’t able to track down others who might have been involved?”
“We had some theories, we both followed every lead we could-to nothing but a dead end.”
“Norton is retired now,” Lefebvre said, “but I’ll get in touch with him about this.” He hesitated, then added, “I truly appreciate the help you’ve given us today. The remains may or may not be those of the Ducanes, but at least we will have a starting place to try a comparison of dental records and so on. That alone may save us a great many hours.”
I wondered if O’Connor was going to pressure him for a return favor, but O’Connor waited in silence, and I followed his lead.
Lefebvre smiled, almost in appreciation, I thought. Then he said, “I can tell you something more, but I must stress that it is not yet for publication- I would caution you against mentioning it to anyone, especially Mrs. Linworth.”
He waited until we both nodded our agreement.
“There were small bone fragments wrapped in a blanket, crushed, it seemed, beneath the weight of the remains of the adults.”
“The baby?” O’Connor said. If I had expected him to feel some triumph because he had doubted that Kyle was Max Ducane, I was wrong. He seemed more upset than before.
Lefebvre held up his hands, palms out, in a halting motion. “Do not, I beg of you, jump to conclusions. The coroner’s office will be able to tell us more. I’m giving you this information as a favor-only so that you can, let’s say, be ready for any announcement that may come from Dr. Woolsey.”
“Will he be able to tell who the baby’s bones belong to?” I asked. “I mean, there won’t be any dental records, right?”
“No, but if the adults are the Ducanes, it is unlikely that any other infant would have been with them.”
O’Connor never opened the cardboard box while we spoke with Lefebvre, and I began to feel as curious about it as Pandora once felt about another. Before I could mention it, O’Connor said something about deadlines, and we thanked Lefebvre, then O’Malley and his crew, and left.
We walked to my car, so that I could drive O’Connor over to the distant place where he had parked his. He explained to me that he had been avoiding the television vans.
The Karmann Ghia’s passenger seat barely provided room for a man his size, and he further crowded himself by holding the box on his lap. He was holding on to it in a way that made me decide not to offer to put it in the trunk.
“I didn’t know Jack lost his eye because of a beating,” I said with a shiver.
“No?”
“No. I never asked him about it myself, because I noticed that when other people did, he came up with some outlandish tale about it. Never the same tale twice.”
O’Connor smiled and smoothed his fingers over the box.
I started the car. I had forgotten that I had left the radio on-“Miss You” blasted at us for a moment. I turned it
