Dear Irene

She smiled, knowing she had nettled him. Suddenly she looked between us slyly. “Is something going on between you two?”

“Engagement,” I answered, noting Frank was slightly taken aback by my directness.

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 stu

“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 stu

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’Co

“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 perso

“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 i

We talked for a few more minutes, then thanked her and said our good-byes. As we went down the sidewalk, she shouted out to Frank from her front porch. “You be good to her, Detective Harriman, or you’ll answer to me.”

We waved and drove off.

On the way home, I told Detective Harriman that he had indeed been good to me, and started to list off some possible rewards. He was looking forward to them, but it wasn’t to be. When we pulled up in his driveway, we noticed a car parked out in front of the house. A woman was sitting in it.

Frank’s mother had decided to surprise us with a visit.

24

FORTUNATELY, BEA HARRIMAN hadn’t been waiting long. Unfortunately, Frank and I had spent that morning arguing, not housekeeping. The place wasn’t a wreck, but it wasn’t what I wanted it to look like when my future mother-in-law stopped by for her first inspection tour. Although she had been inside Frank’s house several other times, this was her first visit since the dawn of our cohabitation.

I was nervous when we opened the front door, but my fears about her reaction to the house were unfounded, it seemed. She was full of leftover Christmas goodwill and quite pleased with herself for surprising us. As we made our way down the hall, she happily commented on the fact that this was the first time she had seen me out of my casts. She even turned a blind eye to the pile of dishes in the sink.

She was startled to see two big, barking dogs in the backyard. Cody, not to be outdone, bit Frank on the ankle and then ran around like Beelzebub was after him, knocking books and papers to the floor in his wake. The pandemonium was raised to a new pitch by the ringing of the telephone.

Home sweet home.

Frank took over the task of carrying his mom’s packages, taking her coat and getting her settled in the guest room. I tried to get the dogs to be quiet. “Shush!” I shouted to them as I picked up the phone.