Cold Morning (15 page)

“They were together?”

She nodded.

“They walked in together. And Blake called him by a name.”

“What?” asked Aleck.

“Johnny. I remember that. But Blake at one point sidled up to him and hissed, ‘Keep your mouth shut, Johnny. You talk too much.' I remember that.”

“But what was he talking about?”

“Dunno.”

“No ideas?”

“It had to do with a girl.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“The only thing I heard was Blake angry as hell, spitting into Johnny's ear. ‘Make sure Emily is on board. You hear me?' But that was it. Blake wasn't happy with the guy and they left real quick.”

“That was it?”

“Yeah.”

Marielle smiled and waved us off.

***

Sitting in the backseat of the car, Aleck said in a low voice, “Isidor Fisch?” He stared into my face. “A new player on your stage.”

I pointed to Willie's head. “Later.”

Willie had been fiddling with the wipers as a light snow fell, but when Aleck blurted out the name, he sat ramrod stiff, head pressed against the rest, inclined. Nosy, the man, of course.

I nodded at Aleck. We rode in silence.

But on the ride back to Flemington, Aleck was restless, bothered. Finally, in an angry whisper, he said, “Edna, I fear you are seeking a murderer who is anybody but Bruno Hauptmann.”

Willie twisted in his seat.

Again the heated whisper, “I fear you're going to the other side.”

“There is no other side, Aleck.”

A snide tone in his voice. “Bruno's not one of your romantic heroes, Ferb dear. He's not Gaylord Ravenal jumping onto a show boat to woo the ingénue.”

I faced him. “Are you out of your mind, Aleck?”

“No, but I fear you're going to go out on a limb. And somewhere a man is sharpening his saw.”

Chapter Fifteen

The telephone in my room jarred me at seven. I'd overslept—I wanted to be up before six, dressed for a walk in the cold morning—but I found myself dreaming of tons of hot money falling from the sky, a disturbing image that was alarming because I couldn't breathe under that avalanche of illicit cash.

Cora Lee Thomas spoke in a hesitant voice. “Miss Ferber, my apologies for the…the call.”

“That's all right. Tell me.”

“Could we meet for coffee? I know you are busy and all…with the trial and…”

I glanced at a clock on the nightstand. “Where?”

“There's a little diner down from you, the Maple Leaf. Nobody goes there but townsfolk.”

“Give me ten minutes.”

When I arrived, she was already sitting in a back booth, steps from the kitchen. An early-morning eatery, noisy with the pleasant hum of men and women headed to work: milk and bread and egg delivery men, all chatting, back-slapping, downing hot coffee and toast, joking, teasing, then rushing off. Everyone, it seemed, was on a first-name basis.
Hey, Linda. New work boots, Jack? Mary, another cup of java. You seen
It Happened One Night
at the Palace, Mabel? That Clark Gable
.

Cora Lee, spotting me, waved, and a few heads turned as I walked back. I was an outsider, clearly, a tiny woman in the long and expensive fur coat and sable hat, a woman who touched her three strands of pearls nervously.

“Thank you,” Cora Lee whispered. She shook my hand.

A waitress walked over and I ordered coffee with a dollop of whipped cream.

“We ain't got whipped cream until they do the pies later on.”

“Plain cream then,” I said.

“I should think so.” A click of her tongue and off she went.

Cora Lee was smiling. “Now you've given her something to yap about all day.”

I smiled back. “I don't think people talk about things I do, Mrs. Thomas.”

She twisted her head to the side, amused. “Miss Ferber, I know who you are now. A writer. I bet you get tongues wagging all over your Manhattan.”

That gave me pause. My Manhattan. I liked that.

As I sipped my coffee—delicious, hot with a hint of bitter chicory—I began, “Tell me why you called.”

She sat back, debated her first words. “I don't got anyone else to talk to—I mean, someone who believes me.” She looked over my shoulder. “I thought long and hard before I dialed your number.”

“Tell me.”

She breathed in. “I heard yesterday from the lawyer—he's this young guy they appointed, but he never looks me in the face so I know he don't believe me—well, he told me some guy has come forward to the police. Now this guy lives on the same floor of the boardinghouse as Annabel, a guy who travels a lot, a drummer of women's dresses, he said. He was leaving that night and seen a man move out of Annabel's room, not fast but sneaky and bent low. A bulky man, big like my boy, bundled up for the Arctic, he says. Scarf around most of his face. But he says he glimpsed some of the face, and then watched him slink down the stairs. He seen a flick of the guy's head.” She swallowed. “They showed him a picture of Cody Lee and he said it's him.”

“My God.”

Desperation in her voice, her words rushed. “But it ain't true, Miss Ferber. He gotta be lying through his teeth—or mistaken. He seen someone else—it had to be. I told you—Cody Lee was with me. The man is wrong.”

“But what now?”

“They're gonna do one of those lineups, you know, have my boy stand with some others and see if this guy can pick him out, you know, all of them dressed in winter clothes.”

I tried to reassure her. “Perhaps he can't make an identification.”

She dipped her head into her chest and said in a low voice, “No, you know how it works for poor folks.” Then, breathing in, she went on. “Now they got this photograph of a scratch on Cody Lee's forearm, a long scratch they seen when they brought him in. It looks like Annabel fought him. They said she did. They found a bit of blood under her nails. But Cody Lee got scratches all the time. Lord, he hauls lumber. He got scratches on his legs, his shoulders. Black-and-blue marks.”

I took a sip of coffee and watched her. “I don't know what I can do, Mrs. Thomas.”

A sliver of a smile. “That's not why I asked you here, Miss Ferber. You can't do nothing. I know that. But”—she gazed toward the doorway, unblinking—“I just needed to
talk
to someone. I catch me a bus every day so I can visit him—there's no one else.” She stopped, abrupt. “No one.”

I patted the back of her wrist. “Any time. Of course. I'm someone who believes you.” I thought of something. “Maybe I
can
do something. Let me call a lawyer friend of mine in New York. Perhaps another attorney can see this differently.”

“No.” Her hand up in my face—so shriveled, skinny, the nails bitten to the quick. Her face fleshless, haggard.

“I'd like to do this,” I said.

Again, louder. “No. The money.”

“Let me worry about that.”

Her eyes got wide and glossy. “Lord, Miss Ferber…”

“There are no guarantees, Mrs. Thomas.”

Then she started to say something, but her voice broke. Sobbing, she dipped into her purse for a handkerchief, but in her fumbling she spilled the contents: a few coins, a comb, a house key, chewing gum. A crumpled pack of cigarettes. She scrambled to gather the items, but they slipped away from her. Finally, distraught, she sat back and closed her eyes. She was whispering, “Oh my Jesus! Oh my Jesus!”

***

Aleck and I slid into the backseat of the town car, and Marcus, offering blankets for our laps because the car was cold, looked unhappy that we refused his gracious offer. Night had fallen early, a whisper of snowflakes swirling in the air. We were headed to Princeton where Aleck had scheduled an early dinner with a professor he planned to interview on an upcoming Sunday night radio program. At the last minute, at my prompting, he'd invited me, though he confessed the professor's wife had wanted to meet the author of
So Big
.

Judge Trenchard had adjourned the trial for the afternoon, and the automobiles were bumper-to-bumper leaving and entering town, a gridlock with horns blaring and fists raised and curses hurled as out-of-town drivers attempted to move. “Zero miles per hour,” Marcus had moaned. Unfortunately, Aleck had been delayed at the hotel so we'd ended up in the unmoving queue, which didn't please Aleck—he repeatedly tapped Marcus on the shoulder as though he were Pegasus and could fly us over the roofs of the cars. But Marcus also seemed flustered, his neck stiff, largely because some hot-shot reporter in an old tin lizzie had edged in front of us, nearly sideswiping our front fender.

“Calm down, Aleck,” I begged him. “Your face is beet red.”

“I don't like being late for meetings.”

“Then perhaps you shouldn't have lollygagged in your room while Marcus and I sat in front.”

“It's all right, Miss Ferber.” Marcus looked back. “Mr. Woollcott is a busy man.”

Aleck smiled. “See, Edna. People understand me. Do you hear that?”

I ignored him, gazing out at the sidewalks jammed with enthusiastic strollers. Laughter broke through the closed windows of the car, a raucous blurt that seemed profane. In the nearby jail, Bruno Hauptmann could doubtless hear the silly hurrahs, the chanting. “Kill Bruno.” That mantra rarely stopped. Children called it out loud as they hawked grainy photographs of baby Lindbergh, or “authentic” autographs of Lindbergh, or cheesy replicas of the notorious ladder. Even wisps of blond hair supposedly cut from the dead baby's head. Boys in knickers and winter slicks pounded on car windows. One attacked our car. “Wanna buy a bar of soap from the courthouse bathroom?” he asked. Marcus shooed him away.

“Look there,” Marcus pointed. “Brayer's Pool House.” We stared at a weathered sign over the storefront, cluttered with sloughing men, a wisp of steam seeping out from a vent. “Every night they throw down blankets on the slate-top tables and rent the space to reporters and visitors for a buck a night.”

“You're kidding,” I said.

“That isn't anything,” Marcus went on. “The floor of the grocery is covered with blankets, people huddled by the rows of aged cheese and packaged dried peas and beans. An old lady sits awake all night, a grandmother, they tell us, watching that the city reporters, boozy from a night at Nellie's Taproom, don't slink over and nibble at the groceries.”

We idled, exhaust from the automobiles clouding the air.

Aleck grumbled. “This is madness. A small town like this acting as if it's Times Square. The nerve.”

“Aleck,” I assured him, “we'll get there.”

He slipped a pocket watch from inside his vest and tapped Marcus on the shoulder with it. Marcus, concentrating on the street, jumped, slammed on the brakes. His lips moved, a silent curse we were not supposed to hear. I didn't blame him.

“Marcus,” Aleck went on, “why would you do this for a living?”

Marcus looked into the rearview mirror and smiled. “What else would you have me do?”

I spoke up. “You could become a drama critic for the
Times
. They pay you for idling and daydreaming in your seat at the Selwyn, third row center.”

I detected a smile from Marcus as he moved his fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. The chauffeur's cap slipped to the side.

We sat, inched forward.

Aleck was craning his head against the side of the window. “Look there,” he said excitedly.

A half block ahead, standing on the sidewalk, a state trooper had stepped into Main Street and was signaling to a car in the line ahead of us. “Anne Morrow Lindbergh,” Aleck stated.

I peered out the window. Two or three cars ahead of us, stuck in the abysmal traffic jam, was a long black town car, and standing alongside it was another state trooper, impatient that nothing was moving. Standing on the sidewalk, the Morrow party was waiting for it. Anne stood next to an older woman swathed in furs and a monstrous velvet hat with sweeping veils. Mrs. Dwight Morrow, obviously. Her arm cradled her daughter's waist, with Anne leaning in, saying something. “That young man pointing in our direction…” My words trailed off.

Aleck pushed his face against the window. “Of course. Anne's younger brother, Dwight Morrow, Jr.”

Dressed in a bulky Chesterfield overcoat open to the wind, an elaborate fuchsia scarf loosely draped around his neck, the small man wearing an incongruous pince-nez looked impatient. I recalled his face from the news photographs. So here was the brother mentioned in Violet Sharp's letters to her cousin Annabel. So here was the troubled young man, victim of bouts of depression, perhaps even schizophrenia, the young man mentioned in the same breath as the slick operator, Blake Somerville. Dwight Morrow, the prankster. The supposed prankster. The reason Annabel had taken a job in Flemington—supposedly to extort cash from a grieving Colonel Lindbergh in order to protect the illustrious Morrow family. Dwight Morrow, Sr., a few years dead now. Ambassador to Mexico, wealthy partner in J.P. Morgan, on the fast track to becoming President of the United States—until a premature heart attack felled the man. Here, his hand raised against a swirl of snow, was the surviving son, a weak reflection of that mighty man.

I exchanged a glance with Aleck. “So that's Dwight.”

He nodded. “In the flesh.”

“No one said he was in town.”

Aleck was amused. “I didn't realize you kept abreast of the comings and goings of the wealthy and privileged in town.”

“True,” I said, “but where is Colonel Lindbergh?”

“Perhaps he's in the town car guarded by the state police that's stalled in traffic.”

To my horror I spotted a young man, maybe nineteen or twenty, dressed in a slough boy cap and burlap jacket, moving across the sidewalk, hawking hot dogs in a carnival voice. A haze of snow covered his shoulders—and the hot dogs he offered. He even rapped at the window of the limousine, though the state trooper, standing on the other side, barked something at the lad, who scurried away.

“A circus,” I said. “Despicable.”

We inched along.

Aleck fumed. “Goddamn it to hell.” Dumbly, he jabbed Marcus' shoulder, a sudden move that didn't please Marcus. I could see color rise in his neck.

Suddenly there was a break in the opposing traffic, and Marcus flicked off Aleck's hand, swung the car into the other lane, causing an approaching car to screech, the driver slamming his brakes. “Enough of this,” Marcus yelled. “Mr. Woollcott, I hear you.”

The car roared across the street, slid between two jaywalkers, turned down a side street, and Marcus grinned like a mischievous schoolboy. “There's more than one way to get out of this town.”

His eyes off the road for a second—another squeal of brakes as a rickety old Ford tried to cut in from a parking spot. Surprised, Marcus leaned on the horn. The man cursed us loudly, unmistakably, through his closed windows, and Marcus, I could see, was tempted to return the favor. But, of course, he didn't.

Aleck did that for him, a volley of
damn you
and
go to hell
tripping happily from his lips. Marcus, back straightened, approved.

But, of course, the roller-coaster ride caused me to slip across the backseat, slam into Aleck's cushy side and mandarin tummy. He frowned—“Really, Edna, such intimacy in front of a stranger”—as I bounced back against the door, a rag doll in the hands of a madman.

“Thank you, Marcus, but I prefer to arrive at my destinations in one piece.”

He bit his lip and refused to face me. “I'm paid to drive—not
sit
with you.”

Aleck applauded stupidly, but we found ourselves immediately snarled in another traffic jam. Obviously others had conceived the same useless plan. Eventually, of course, we crept out of town, Aleck sweating and harrumphing, Marcus silent now, and I—I wished I'd remained in my hotel room reading a novel by anyone but Kathleen Norris.