Death Of A Dream Maker (9 page)

Fortunately, the occupants were most assuredly
asleep: deafening snores drifted down the main staircase at regular
intervals, deep and ratcheting. It sounded like a shoe with a loose
sole had gotten stuck in the bell of a bullhorn. They crept to the
base of the steps and stared upstairs in horrified wonder.

“It can't be Abe,” Auntie Lil whispered cautiously.
“He can hardly breathe.”

“Either it's the wife or a
three-hundred-and-fifty-pound male nurse,” Herbert agreed. They
stared at each other in sudden alarm. “Wait here,” he decided,
firmly guiding Auntie Lil back down the steps. “I'll check the
upstairs. You search down here.”

They went to work, Herbert creeping upstairs as
silently as a shadow and reappearing less than ten minutes later.
Auntie Lil was caught, quite literally, with her hand in the cookie
jar. Her guilty figure was illuminated by a circle of light that
shone in through the kitchen window from behind the backyard
pool.

“What are you doing?” Herbert whispered sharply.

“These are
Pepperidge Farm,”
she
explained.

“No excuse. Come on. We must leave at once. The wife
is a restless sleeper.”

“The dead son did not live here,” Herbert announced
once they had safely reached Auntie Lil's Plymouth. “Three of the
bedrooms look as if no one has lived in them for years. There are
two others that are occupied. The wife was snoring loudly in one.
Abe was in the other. He's lying in a hospital bed and there's a
respirator against one wall. It is like a hospital in there.
Except, no nurse. And something even more interesting.”

“What?”

“He keeps a gun in a drawer by his bed. Loaded.”

“You went that close?” Auntie Lil stared at him
disapprovingly.

“He didn't notice me,” Herbert assured her. “I was
like the wind slipping past, nothing more.” He coughed
modestly.

Auntie Lil pondered the significance of the gun.
“Their son was shot in the face. Or, at least, that was the rumor
going around the cemetery.”

Herbert nodded. “Maybe so. But not by Abe. He is
totally bedridden. And I do not think that a father would shoot his
own son in the face. Nor a mother. Besides, there was genuine
sorrow in that house. I could feel it. There was a large portrait
of a young man propped against one wall in the hallway. Someone had
leaned it there in their grief.”

Even Abby, Auntie Lil decided grudgingly, probably
had maternal feelings. “I found nothing interesting downstairs,”
she admitted to Herbert “Photographs of some of their children, but
none of the younger two I saw at the cemetery. They've been
expunged from the family, it's obvious. Other than that, it was
just a lot of plastic-covered furniture.” She shivered.

“Shall we try the home of Jacob Rosenbloom?” Herbert
suggested. “We still have an hour until sunrise.” He consulted the
list of addresses that Rebecca Rosenbloom had provided. “I believe
it is only a mile or two from here.”

But when they arrived at the considerably more modest
home of Abe and Abby's oldest son, a snarling Rottweiler threw its
heavy body against the front door the instant Herbert inserted the
key. An upstairs light went on immediately. They scurried into the
bushes with only seconds to spare before the front door opened.
Thankfully, the dog was being restrained by its unseen owner, a
sign of its probable viciousness. It slobbered as it pulled
frantically at its leash, straining to leap free and charge into
the front yard. The beast's body was silhouetted perfectly against
the glare from the streetlight, down to two rows of jagged incisors
and a thin string of drool that dangled from its snapping jaws.

Auntie Lil and Herbert decided right then and there
that their housebreaking days were over. They would find another
way to solve the mystery.

Sleeping late was never a problem for Auntie Lil. No
one ever dared phone before noon. The next day was an exception.
T.S. rang up just past ten o'clock and kept her on the line so long
that she finally demanded to know what he wanted.

“I was just checking to see how awake you were,” he
confessed. “I kept having this feeling that you had gone back out
last night.”

“Nonsense, Theodore.” She yawned elaborately. “I was
so utterly exhausted that I could hardly move. I went right to bed
and would still be sleeping—if you had not called.”

T.S. mumbled a sheepish apology. “It's just that I
think we should both take it easy,” he told her. “This is too big
for us. There's more in the papers today. It was a
professionally-made car bomb, that much is certain. And the nephew
they found in the bottom of the grave had definite connections to
organized crime. They say he was into the loan sharks. I think this
is a good one to sit out, don't you?”

Auntie Lil was quiet. “You may be right, Theodore,”
she finally agreed. “At least long enough to let the professionals
have a chance at solving it first.”

“That's a relief. I thought you'd argue. We must be
getting more reasonable in our old age. I'll phone you in a couple
hours to see how you're doing.”

“No need,” she assured him sweetly. “I'll be out at
the hairdressers. I'll give you a call in early evening.”

She hung up her phone and stared out the window,
seeing not the pristinely blue day that had followed yesterday's
downpours but, instead, a similar day over forty years ago. It was
Italy, she was young, and Max was alive. They stood together, hand
in hand, staring out the tiny window of a whitewashed hotel, gazing
at the blue of a sky that met the blue of the sea in one great,
unbroken line. All the years of their lives had stretched before
them then. Where had those years gone?

The raucous forced laughter of teenagers beneath her
window brought her back to the present. She watched their rude
flirting absently, shaking her head with conviction. No, she
decided, she was not getting more reasonable in her old age. Age
could claim her body piece by piece. But, by God, her spirit
belonged to her. Let T.S. sit at home inside his safe apartment.
She would do what she could.

Meanwhile, three miles away, T.S. frantically scanned
his neat racks of shoes for his finest black leathers. He thought
that he had thrown Auntie Lil off the trail rather neatly. Now he
could act without worrying about her safety.

Although Auntie Lil sometimes filled in at other
companies during the heavy production seasons, she had not been to
Max Rose Fashions in twenty years. She knew, however, that over the
years the company’s facilities had expanded steadily, taking over
neighboring offices until the company occupied nearly all of a huge
brick building that dominated Thirty-first Street between Sixth and
Seventh Avenues.

She stood outside the giant structure, staring up at
its small windows. As always, she was assaulted with one overriding
impression of the garment district: noise. Behind her, engines
roared as trucks jockeyed for good unloading positions. Young men
yelled for clearance as they wove racks of clothing and rolling
platforms of boxes in and out of the noisy crowd. It was lunchtime
and the streets were thronged with workers on their breaks.
Laughter and shouts rang out against a steady stream of impatient
honking from stalled traffic. As she passed a deli, a wave of sound
rolled out through the open door into the street with a life force
of its own. The human voices blended in a cacophony as loud and
reliable as that of the machines whirring endlessly on the floors
above.

No one ever just spoke in the garment industry: every
word was shouted, every gesture exaggerated. Auntie Lil's naturally
booming voice had served her well on the job, but it was no wonder
that outsiders felt she must be partially deaf.

In abrupt contrast, Max Rose Fashions was eerily
quiet. The elevator opened onto a spacious floor divided into
reception, sales, and office areas. Directly behind the reception
section, twin rows of cubicles flanked a hanging rack of next
season's offerings. A long row of bagged dresses and pantsuits
dangled silently beneath dark spotlights. Normally, the area would
be bustling with prospective buyers and sales representatives as
they examined garments and then returned to the cubicles to
negotiate orders and prices. Today, the area was empty and forlorn
looking. There was not even anyone behind the front desk to greet
Auntie Lil. She took a right and headed down a long hallway toward
the accounting and executive offices that occupied one side of the
building. Workers and machinery were relegated to the inner
darkness of the lower cavernous warehouse floors, but the executive
offices should be easy enough to find.

The offices were empty as well. Odd, she thought,
even though Max had died. She paused in front of one office and
read the doorplate: David Rosenbloom. So the dead nephew had worked
with Max at the factory. At least in theory: his desk was bare and
the surrounding room equally sterile. Perhaps someone had cleaned
it since his murder.

A few doors down, she discovered an office for the
second nephew, Jacob. Auntie Lil stuck her head in his door and saw
a room crammed with folders, file cabinets, and empty coffee cups.
At least it looked like he actually did some work.

The names on the other doorplates were unfamiliar —
she had been gone a very long time. Whole new generations had taken
over since. She saw that Max had appointed someone named Thomas
Brody chief executive officer. Perhaps he had been at the funeral?
At the far end of the hall, she heard a slightly familiar female
voice, obviously speaking on the telephone. She slowed before she
reached the door and listened, unseen in the hallway.

“Relax. I'm the only one here,” the voice said. “Half
of them didn't come in at all and the other half are downstairs
being questioned now... Yes, by the police. Who the hell else did
you think? The police, the FBI, the feds, the CIA .. Hell, for all
I know there are a couple of Canadian Mounties in there... No, they
did not even come close to asking... Of course not, do I seem
stupid to you?” Her voice was silent for a moment. “That's very
unlikely. There's no way they could get a tap in two days.” The
woman paused then continued. “I'm trying to find out now... Yes,
I’m sure he had something to do with it... Well, whoever took care
of it did a very messy job. Half his face was blown off. So much
for professionalism…  Right... right... I'm sure you were
lunching with the pope when it happened... Okay. Twenty minutes.”
The phone slammed down abruptly.

Auntie Lil waited a minute and used the time to creep
back up the hall. She then retraced her steps noisily, calling out
“Halloo! Halloo! Is anyone here?” in her very best little-old-lady
voice. When she reached the occupied office again, she stole a look
at the nameplate:
Joyce Carruthers.
Of course. She should
have recognized the voice at once. Auntie Lil remembered her as a
young bookkeeper who, she suspected, had harbored a crush on Max
for years—to no avail. She was hardly Max's type. In addition to
being suspicious, resentful, and narrow-minded, Joyce Carruthers
had been incredibly tall with stooped shoulders and a face that
most unfortunately resembled Abraham Lincoln in drag. She had
always worn far too much makeup and grossly mismatched clothes for
someone in the garment industry. The too tight sweaters and
hip-hugging skirts that Auntie Lil remembered from the fifties had
given way to a too tight turtleneck, knit miniskirt, stockings
appliquéd with sequined roses, and stiletto heels that increased
the bookkeeper's already impressive height by at least four inches.
Her hair was elaborately coiffed in a pseudo-messy explosion
currently in vogue. Heavy gold earrings shaped like fans dangled
from her ears and pulled her lobes down with their weight. Given
that Joyce Carruthers was now over sixty years old, her costume was
atrocious bordering on frightening.

Twenty-five years had not improved the bookkeeper's
disposition any more than her sense of style. She glared at Auntie
Lil, making it obvious that she resented the intrusion. Her fingers
were poised above the keyboard of her computer as if she were
impatient to get back to work. Oddly, beneath the garish makeup,
her hatchet face had gone white. Were her fingers trembling?
Perhaps Auntie Lil's sudden appearance had frightened her.

“Can I help you?” she asked Auntie Lil in a cold
voice.

Pretending to be flustered, Auntie Lil took a moment
to study her. Something about her face had changed. Auntie Lil felt
as if she were staring at a figure in a wax museum that did not
quite match its subject. The skin was pulled back too tightly on
either side of the nose; it had flattened her unwrinkled and
slightly distorted features unattractively. Her eyes were elongated
and the brows were plucked to within a hair of disappearing
entirely. Flat, sheenless expanses of skin occupied the spots where
Auntie Lil had been expecting wrinkles. “Joyce?” she asked in a
deliberately tentative voice.

“Yes. Can I help you?” the woman replied tersely, as
if she did not recognize Auntie Lil. Yet Auntie Lil was sure that
she had recognized her just fine.

“I'm Lillian Hubbert. Do you remember me?”

The woman stared for several seconds, her feelings
hidden behind the smooth mask of her face. “I should have known it
was you that caused all that fuss when I saw you at the funeral.
You trampled me worming your way to the front.”

So, thought Auntie Lil. I was right. Here is a woman
who was in love with Max for many years. “Where is everyone else?”
she asked.

“They're busy being questioned. This mess has managed
to bring us to a standstill just when we have spring orders to
fill.” She glared at Auntie Lil as if this were her fault

“Questioned? By the police?” Auntie Lil inched in the
door.