The Girl Is Murder (23 page)

And me? What would I be doing in four years? Working for Pop, tending my own family, or spending my days as a secretary in some dingy Lower East Side office?

The phone rang, causing me to jump.

“Iris?” Mrs. Mrozenski called up the stairs. “Is for you.”

Who would be calling for
me
? I took the steps two at a time, my heartbeat matching the pace of my feet.

Maybe it was Benny. That would explain Mrs. Mrozenski’s smile as she handed me the receiver. A boy calling the house for me would be a historic event.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hello, Iris,” said a decidedly female voice. “It’s Grace.”

My heartbeat picked back up. Had she seen me tailing Josephine and her that afternoon?

“Hi,” I said. “Is everything all right?”

“Oh, it’s fine. I was just thinking about how nice it was to see you on Saturday.”

There was something pulled and strained about her voice. Clearly she had another reason for calling, but she wasn’t willing to own up to it yet.

“How’s school?” she asked.

“Fine. How about for you?”

“Oh, marvelous. But I’m absolutely shattered. You know what a chore Chapin can be.”

We both paused and listened to the hum of the line.

“I’m curious about something,” she said when the silence began to approach awkwardness. “It occurred to me that I might know someone you go to school with. His name’s Tom Barney?”

“Tom Barney?” I repeated, hoping to buy myself some time. What was the best way to proceed? Admit that he had disappeared and garner her reaction? Or pretend all was fine and do the same? What would Pop do? “Sure,” I said. “I know him. He’s kind of hard to miss. In fact, he used to hang out with the group I went to the Savoy with.”

“Really? What do you mean ‘used to’?”

“It’s the strangest thing. He’s been missing for almost a month.”

Her breathing deepened. Even over the lousy connection, I could hear the tension strangling her.

“So how do you know him?” I asked.

“We went out a time or two.”

“Seriously? I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s dreamy, but not exactly the kind of fellow I would figure you for. I guess that’s why it ended, huh?”

“Sort of.” Another pause. I could picture her in her massive apartment, looping the pigtail cord around her arm. “Has anyone said where he might’ve gone?”

“No. I don’t think anyone knows. He’s taken a powder before, but he always let people know where he was going. This time he didn’t, and it has everyone pretty upset.”

“Do they think something happened to him?”

“They seem to be leaning that way.”

I thought I heard a tiny gasp escape from her end of the line. “I think I’m in trouble, Iris.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I think I know what happened to Tommy and it’s not good.”

It took me a moment to regain my composure. Of all the things that I pictured happening that night, Grace confessing to a crime was at the bottom of the list. “What did you do?” I finally said, hoping the anger I was feeling wasn’t apparent in my words.

“It wasn’t me, I swear. It was that girl I told you about. Josephine.”

“What did she do?”

She sighed heavily, so heavily that it almost sounded a bit theatrical, but that might’ve been the connection.

“She didn’t like that I was going out with him. Thought he was beneath me.”

“And you didn’t?”

“Honestly, I did at first. But the more I got to know him, the less it seemed to matter.”

“Did you tell her that?”

“You have to understand Josephine.” That imperious sound was back in her voice, the one she’d used when she was at my house, schooling me on the ways of the world. “It wasn’t just about my reputation. She wasn’t happy with how he was taking me away from her. I thought she’d get over it, but then she gave me an ultimatum. Told me I had to break up with him, or—”

“Or what?”

“Or she’d tell people what we’d been doing. With the enlisted men.”

“Right,” I said. She was talking about the favors in exchange for nice dinners and little gifts. Those weren’t the kinds of things nice Chapin girls did, and while there was a fine line between a girl being friendly and being fast, there was no way anyone wouldn’t have thought Grace had crossed it. If word got out, Grace would be marked as a girl who had ruined herself in exchange for goods and services.

“I told her that I didn’t care. I was in love with him, but she swore she would tell. I was so scared, Iris.” Was she really? It was hard to tell from her voice, but perhaps enough time had passed that she’d managed to quell the emotion the way I could distance myself from the agony of learning about Mama’s death. “I stopped returning his calls, told him it was over. But he showed up at school one day, begging me to take him back. I couldn’t stand it, how hurt he was. And so that night I told Josephine that if it was really so important to her that I stop seeing him, she would have to break it off for me. And after that I never heard from him again.”

So that’s what she’d meant when she told Bea and Bev that she didn’t have to worry about seeing him again. “Why do you think Jo did anything more than tell Tom to take a hike?”

“Jo was really strange afterward. She refused to talk about what happened with him. Got upset whenever I brought him up. She made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anyone that she’d gone to talk to him.”

This was new. Why ask someone to make such a promise unless you needed an alibi?

“Honestly, I didn’t think anything would keep Tommy away for good. What we had—it wasn’t just a puppy-love thing. I really thought we would be together forever. So as the weeks passed and he didn’t try to contact me, I started to get worried. And then on Saturday—”

“This past Saturday?”

“Yes. I went to all the places I knew he used to hang out. I even went by his house. And there was no trace of him anywhere.” So that was why she’d really come to the Lower East Side—to find out about Tom. I was her cover in case anyone asked her where she’d gone or, God forbid, saw her entering or exiting the subway.

“Did you go to 240 Houston Street?” I asked her. Maybe Grace had left the note Pop had found in Tom’s locker.

“Where?”

“It’s just a place I heard some of the kids hang out.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

There was nothing in her voice that made me think she was lying. “Do you think Josephine is capable of hurting someone?” I asked.

“I don’t know. There have been stories—rumors really—about things that happened at her old school. She’s a scholarship student at Chapin. She lives alone with her mother. Her father is supposedly overseas, though I think she made that part up. She told me once that they moved to Manhattan to get away from something that happened where she used to live. This was supposed to be a fresh start for her family. She … she’s done things before that make me think she’s rougher than she wants me to believe.”

“With the servicemen?”

“Yes. She’s stolen from them. And I’ve seen her shoplift. She may not be capable of physically hurting someone, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew someone who could do it for her.”

What I’d witnessed that afternoon certainly corroborated that. “What do you want me to do about this, Grace?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted someone to know what was going on. I don’t like who I’m becoming. I realized that after I left your house on Saturday. I’ve become this ugly, awful person because of Josephine. I want it to stop, but mostly I want to know that if she did do something to Tom, she’ll pay for it.”

Who was the real Grace Dunwitty? Was it the girl who was thrilled to see me on Saturday afternoon, or the cool cat who needed me as her alibi on Saturday night? Or could it be this girl, who seemed genuinely scared and remorseful? I wanted to believe the last one was the version of Grace that counted, but she’d mixed me up too much the last few days for me to completely trust her.

And yet—“I should probably tell you something, Grace. My pop has been hired by Tom’s parents to try to find him.”

“Oh.” She was quiet for a beat while she struggled to take this new information in. “His parents must be pretty worried.”

“His mother is. His father is more angry than anything. He seems to think Tom’s nothing but a big screwup who they should write off.”

“That’s terrible. So I guess you’re going to have to tell your father everything I just told you?”

“I won’t if you tell me not to.” Why did I say that? Because I wanted Grace to like me. Because even after her weird behavior this past weekend, I wanted her to be my friend.

“No, I think you should tell him everything. Especially if it will help Tom.” She sighed heavily into the line. “Thanks for listening, Iris. I feel so much better getting that off my chest. You’re a true friend, you know that?”

I told her I did.

WE SAID OUR FAREWELLS. I hung up the phone and went into the parlor. There I turned on the Philco and listened to the war news while flipping through
Calling All Girls.
I wasn’t reading it, though. I was replaying Grace’s words in my head. If Josephine was as manipulative as she said, it wouldn’t be hard for her to convince some sailor making eyes at her to hurt a small-time thug on her behalf. And if Tom was wearing the zoot on the night it went down, any number of servicemen would’ve been happy to humiliate him, just like the scores of others who’d done it before. Only this time, maybe Tom fought back too hard and ended up with something a lot worse than his pants around his ankles.

Where was Pop? I desperately wanted to talk to him. It was time for me to come clean before I got in over my head. It wasn’t like him to stay out without telling us when he’d be home. Could he have made his own headway on the Barney case? Was he working on something new? If he was on the tail of someone, he wouldn’t necessarily have a chance to call home and express his regrets over being late for dinner. But would a stakeout really last this long? He’d been gone since I’d skipped out of school, longer, in fact, since he hadn’t been home when I called Mrs. Mrozenski. He couldn’t keep up that kind of pace for hours on end. His stump would grow sore, even if he’d been sitting in one place the entire time. And what about his pain pills? He probably hadn’t taken any with him, thinking he’d be home before the throbbing demanded another dose.

I fell into a fitful sleep on the sofa, integrating the chilling news of what was happening overseas into my dreams. In my dream Pop is hidden in the shadows of a submarine, trying to keep himself from being spotted in a space no larger than his office closet. His wound is pulsing, his stump tired of being held in the same position. Slowly, it begins to vibrate, the motion worsening the more he tries to still it. His thigh is centimeters from striking a metal support pole whose top screw has come loose and will rattle when set off by the slightest movement. Pop knows that when that happens, his hiding place will be given away and he’ll be a dead man …

I awoke with a jolt, uncertain where I was, but doubly glad I hadn’t had to experience whatever was about to happen in my dream. What woke me? The parlor was cold, the radio had turned to static, and the front door stood closed. Had Pop returned and bypassed me, assuming it was better to leave me asleep than to make me climb upstairs to my room? No. If he had come home, he would’ve silenced the Philco, extinguished the lamp, tossed the orange-and-brown afghan over my body to keep away the chill.

Maybe it was the radio signing off for the night that roused me. I switched it off and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, preparing myself for the cold climb to my room.

A sound came from the kitchen—rattling, like someone was at the back door. Was that what I’d heard? There was no way to know for sure. The back door worked on a skeleton key and was always locked from the inside. Pop used it to haul coal inside and Mrs. Mrozenski used it to take the garbage out of the house, but we were forbidden from using it as a main entrance. Pop said it was because Mrs. Mrozenski’s mother had been a maid who was always restricted to the rear door of the house, and Mrs. M never wanted to feel like a servant in her own home. I thought it was funny at the time, especially given that she spent her days cooking and cleaning, but I was suddenly grateful for that little nugget of knowledge, because if someone was at that back door, I knew it wasn’t someone who was supposed to be.

Maybe what I’d heard was the wind or the vibration a car created as it passed through the alley. I continued up the stairs, convinced it was nothing, when I heard the unmistakable sound of glass breaking. That wasn’t the wind. Someone had just broken one of the small rectangular panes at the top of the kitchen door—I was certain of it. It wouldn’t do the culprit much good. The key was never left in the lock. It hung from a hook above the stove. He would realize that soon enough and move on to the kitchen window. It, too, would be locked, but if he broke it, it would be large enough for a grown man to pass through.

My mouth was dry. I wanted to call to Mrs. Mrozenski, but her bedroom was suddenly a million miles away. I didn’t want to alert the burglar that we were here and vulnerable. I needed to call the police.

With leaden legs, I went into Pop’s office, leaving the door open so I could still hear what was happening in the kitchen. I picked up the receiver and told the operator to get me the police. The dispatcher responded to my calm recitation that someone was breaking in by telling me to lock myself in a closet and a patrol car would be there shortly. From the kitchen more glass broke. I wished Mrs. Mrozenski wasn’t so conscientious and had, for once in her life, left a sink full of dirty dishes to slow his progress, but I knew there would be no such thing waiting for our robber. Still, it seemed to take an eternity from the time I heard the window break to when any other sounds came from the kitchen. I turned off the lights in the office and slipped into the small closet that Pop used for file storage and client coats, leaving the door cracked open just a sliver. There, among his galoshes and umbrellas, I sat with my knees pulled up to my chest and waited.

Footsteps left the kitchen and entered the parlor. Then, presumably finding nothing of value, he entered the office and clicked on a lamp.