“What’s your mom’s name, Benjamin?”
“Anne. Anne Hahn.”
“I need you to knock on your mom’s door. Okay, Benjamin? Don’t open it,” she emphasized. “Don’t look inside. Just knock. Really loud. And tell her the police are on the phone.”
It took another couple of rounds to reassure Benjamin he wouldn’t get in trouble, but she eventually heard him comply. And comply he did. The kid had a strong fist and stronger lungs.
“Hello?”
The woman sounded simultaneously worried, exhausted, and pained. Apparently her exercise partner was a very talented trainer.
“Ms. Hahn. My name’s Ellie Hatcher. I’m calling from the New York Police Department about your former neighbor, Tanya Abbott.”
“Tanya?” The stress in the woman’s voice fell away as she caught her breath and tuned in to the conversation.
“Yes, she may be a material witness to a homicide here, and we’re trying to find family members who might stay in touch with her.”
“I haven’t heard a word from the girl since they sold that house—what? It must have been three years ago.”
“That was after Marion died?”
“Her mother. That’s right. Tanya was, you know. Well, maybe you don’t know. She was a troubled girl. In and out of that house, back and forth all the time like it was some kind of youth hostel. I tell you, Marion was a
Ellie realized that the one activity Anne Hahn might enjoy more than exercising was gossiping about her neighbors.
“You said Tanya had a habit of coming and going from the house. Did Marion have men going in and out of there as well?” A sudden shift from the honor roll to promiscuity was a telltale sign of sexual abuse, and most of the abuse happened close to home.
“No way. Marion wasn’t like that. If she even dated, I surely never saw sign of it. My guess is she got knocked up at nineteen and learned her lesson. Kept her knees shut ever since.”
“Tanya was an only child?”
“That’s right.”
Ellie reached for the photo album she’d found in Tanya’s bedroom and flipped through it, stopping again on the page depicting a young, happy Tanya with an even younger blond boy. Something about the boy still felt so familiar. It had to be some resemblance to Tanya, but she still couldn’t put her finger on it.
“Are you sure? Maybe she had a half-brother? We found some pictures of a kid who was probably eight or so years younger than her.”
“The sperm donor who knocked up Marion could have impregnated half of Baltimore for all she knew, but a relationship with a half-sibling? Huh-uh. Marion made it real clear the dad wasn’t around. The kid could have been anyone from the neighborhood—Tanya baby-sat for a whole bunch of us.”
“Her mom was pregnant at nineteen and died three years ago? She must have been young.”
“Yeah, like forty-seven or something. Cervical cancer. Said she should have just ripped out all the equipment after she had Tanya. Poor thing spent that final year worrying about her medical bills.”
“They didn’t have much money, I take it.”
“You kidding? No one who lives around here does.”
“What about Tanya? We got the impression that she might have had a private counselor or a psychiatrist about ten years ago?”
“News to me. Now, she might’ve
“We got the impression Tanya might have access to some funds. Maybe Marion had life insurance?”
“No, I would’ve heard about that. I went to see Marion a few times a week there at the end. She was borrowing against everything. If she’d had life insurance, she would’ve been borrowing on that, too. Marion didn’t even have health insurance. She worked as a domestic, you know?”
“A housekeeper?”
“No, like a nanny, I guess. She’d treat those families like her own. Come to think of it, that kid you saw in the pictures with Tanya could’ve been one of the kids Marion nannied. A couple of the families she worked for along the way were real good about letting Marion bring Tanya around with her, like they were all one big happy family. Shoot—I should be able to remember some names, but nothing’s coming to mind. I know one of the guys was some big muckety-muck. She worked for that family for years. Doesn’t matter, though. When she got sick, none of them came to take care of her, so it only goes so far. You know?”
“Can you think of anything else I should know?”
“Well, there is one thing, but, well, I probably shouldn’t say anything.”
Those five words had been the countdown to countless gossip sessions over the decades. Oscar Wilde’s downfall could probably be traced to some woman in a corset, sipping tea in a parlor of Victorian London, whispering, “I probably shouldn’t say anything.”
“It’s not catty chatter,” Ellie assured the woman. “It’s background material for an official police investigation.”
Anne plowed ahead. “It’s just funny what you said about Tanya having some money. I always wondered about that. I should have figured that girl stashed something away. And to think she let her mother die worrying about hospital bills.”
“What made you think Tanya was holding out?”
“Because I talked to her one day, right about the time the realtor put up the For Sale sign outside their house. Must’ve been just a month after Marion died. I asked her, wasn’t there some way she could hold on to the house on her own. She said she tried, but that the money was all tied up.”
“What money was that?”
“Exactly. I pressed her on it, and she got real nervous and said she had some money from an uncle but that she had to use it for school. Well, that surprised the heck out of me, because as far as I knew, Marion was an only child, and Tanya’s daddy was never part of the picture. So I said, ‘Well, you’re sort of old to be going back to school, aren’t you?’ And she said something like, ‘Well, that’s what the money’s for, and you never know.’ Then she scurried back into the house, and I never thought it my place to ask her about it again. Tanya moved out not long after that, and I’ve never seen her since.”
Ellie thanked Anne for her time and hung up the phone just as Rogan was doing the same.
“Anything?” he asked.
“More questions than answers,” she said. “Tanya’s mom was a nanny. Died about three years ago with a ton of debt. The bank sold the house from under Tanya. The neighbor did say Tanya mentioned something once about having some money for school that an uncle gave her, but the neighbor doesn’t think Tanya even has an uncle.”
“Maybe a sugar daddy?”
“Who knows. What do you have?”
“Dr. Lyle Hewson’s still in business. Closed on Saturday, of course, but from the on-call number, I finally got through to his assistant. Big surprise, she was worried about patient confidentiality, but I did ask if Dr. Hewson ever did pro bono work on court cases or anything like that. She laughed and said the doctor wouldn’t get out of bed for free. She also said he charges one-fifty an hour.”
“Would’ve been less ten years ago.”
“Eighty-five, to be precise.”
“Too much for a single mom working as a nanny.”
“Way too much.”
