Greta Bellamy was frowning furiously. “But I don’t understand. Did she have a job? I saw her myself a few times. I can’t think who would have hired her?”
“Nobody hired her as far as lean tell,” Gregor said. “No welfare and no job.”
“Maybe she was engaging in prostitution,” Simon Roveter said.
“Maybe she was,” Gregor agreed. “Whores don’t have to be good looking to get business, but they do have to be decent looking to make serious money. Alissa may have been decent looking when Tim was first born. I haven’t seen a picture of her from that time and I wouldn’t know. What you have to take into account, however, is that by the time Alissa begins to be seen by other people in her role as Tim’s mother, she is already everything I have described her to be. Not only enormous but slovenly, ill-groomed, unkempt, and alcoholic. But she still wasn’t on welfare or food stamps or Medicaid. And her bills were getting paid. I wasn’t able to check on her electricity or her heat. I didn’t have time. Up until about three years ago, the taxes were paid every six months at the Derby tax collector’s office, on time and in cash and in person.”
“What happened three years ago?” Nick Bannerman asked.
“The taxes started to be paid by check,” Gregor said, “and mailed in. But they were still paid and they were still paid on time.”
“Maybe she was the one who was dealing drugs,” Magda Hale said.
“If she was, she was very, very good at it,” Gregor said. “Nobody in any drug squad anywhere in this part of Connecticut has ever connected that house to drugs. I was able to check. I’ll tell you something else I was able to check on. At ten o’clock last night, I got court permission—actually, a man named Roger Dornan got court permission—to do a global search of the bank records in this state for any sign of a bank account under Alissa Bradbury’s social security number. If we had found such a bank account, we would have had to get court permission to pull the records of it, but it didn’t matter. There was no such bank account. Not in the state of Connecticut. My guess is that there isn’t any such bank account in any state, anywhere.”
“Roger Dornan,” Tony Bandero said incredulously. “Roger Dornan went behind my back?”
“Nobody went behind your back,” Philip Brye said in exasperation. “You’re the one who went on television and said that everybody in every department connected with the New Haven police should give Mr. Demarkian whatever helped he asked for.”
“I know I said that,” Tony Bandero said sharply, “but I expected to be kept informed, for Christ’s sake. Of course I expected to be kept informed.”
“Wait a minute,” Nick Bannerman said. “If there isn’t any bank account, where are the real estate tax checks coming from?”
“Ah,” Gregor said, “very good question. And the answer is that right now, we can’t be absolutely sure, because the town of Derby does not photocopy the tax checks it receives. My assumption, however, is that the tax checks are coming from the same place the cash was coming from, from the man who was Tim Bradbury’s father, and who kept Alissa Bradbury just well enough to ensure that she would not file a paternity suit against him or otherwise annoy him in public, all the time Tim was growing up.”
Simon Roveter shifted in his seat, uneasy. “If that’s really true,” he said slowly, “then why the sudden switch from cash to checks? Wouldn’t that be a very stupid thing to do? Even if Derby doesn’t photocopy its tax checks, the checks can be traced, can’t they? Especially if the police know exactly what it is they’re looking for and who they want to investigate?”
“Checks can be traced,” Gregor said, “but about three years ago, something happened that left our murderer with no choice. Alissa Bradbury died. To be precise, she was murdered. There’s no way for us to know now, unless the murderer tells us himself, why that happened. It might have been that our man was tired of keeping Alissa Bradbury. He had a woman of his own by then. He was probably tired of being tethered to the past and not sure that he could walk out on her even after all those years without being exposed. There might have been some kind of violent argument. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Tim Bradbury either saw this murder happen or found out about it soon afterward.”
“But why would he cover it up?” Dessa Carter asked. “This is his mother you’re talking about.”
“It’s his mother, yes, but he wasn’t close to her, and remember it was his father who killed her. I think that in spite of that ‘unknown’ designation on his birth certificate, Tim Bradbury knew who his father was—after the murder, if not before. I think his loyalties were divided and his reactions were confused. At any rate, Alissa’s body was stashed under the floorboards in the bedroom in the house at forty-seven Stephenson Road, the utilities were shut off and the house was boarded up. And that’s where everything sat, for three long years, until Tim was no longer able to rationalize what he knew about the death of his mother.”