The Girl Is Murder (24 page)

I was certain my heart was thumping so loudly that, like in my dream about Pop, he’d hear it and uncover my hiding place. I desperately wanted to see him with my own eyes, not only so I could identify him later, but to cement for myself once and for all that this wasn’t a new scene in the awful dream I’d been having the moment before.

What would you have done if they had a gun?
Pop had asked me after I’d taken the photos of Mrs. Wilson. I prayed I wasn’t about to find out the answer to that question.

A desk drawer slid open and papers rustled. Another drawer opened, and another one, though it was clear that whatever he was seeking wasn’t conveniently showing itself. From the minute space left by the open closet door, I could see that his back was to me. I longed to open the door just a little more, enough to see the color of his trousers or the shape of his shoes, but I was certain that the hinges would creak, giving me away.

He turned and approached the forbidden locked cabinet, where Pop kept his gun. He rattled the lock and found it immovable. Something new was produced—perhaps an object from the desk? He banged it against the cabinet with enough force that I could hear the wood splinter. Just as I was recovering from that jarring noise, a siren wailed outside the house, announcing the police’s arrival.

The culprit cursed. I’m not trying to be a goody two-shoes by not repeating what was said. I honestly don’t remember which forbidden word it was because the voice caught me so off guard.

Our intruder was a woman.

In a flash, she was out of the office and running toward the kitchen. I pushed out of the closet, confirmed that the cabinet was broken, and took off after her, just in time to see the edge of her skirt as it turned the corner into the kitchen. Someone was pounding on the front door and demanding, “Open up, it’s the police,” but I didn’t have a moment to spare. I made it into the kitchen and found the back door wide open, the skeleton key protruding from the lock. I rushed out the door and found the alley empty.

CHAPTER

17

“WHAT TIME DID YOU HEAR the glass break?”

Mrs. Mrozenski and I were seated at the kitchen table along with Officer Dignam, a man with jowls so pronounced he could have been mistaken for a bulldog. “I’m not sure,” I told him. Mrs. Mrozenski wrapped her arm around me. In her other hand she clutched a rosary. “Maybe an hour ago?”

He checked his watch and I stole a look at the time. It was one o’clock in the morning.

“And you’re certain the perpetrator was female?”

“Absolutely. I heard her curse. And I saw part of her skirt. It was black, wool maybe. A-line, so it flared when she ran.”

He seemed to be attempting to write down everything I said, but I’d lost him somewhere around “A-line.”

“It means that the skirt can open up really full, so that you can dance in it.”

A commotion came from the front of the house, where two other officers had been left to assess what had taken place in the office. A familiar voice rose above their gruff, officious tones—Pop was home.

He rushed into the kitchen, looking like death warmed over. His face was gray, his hair a greasy mess, and his leg, as predicted, had reached a point where he could no longer put weight on it.

“Oh my God—Iris. Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

He wasn’t just exhausted and sore; there was something else off about him, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Despite his obvious physical agony, he launched himself at me and took me in his arms. I took in a whiff of body odor and something else. He was drunk.

So not only had I wasted an evening worrying about him, I also got to confront a burglar all by myself so he could—what? Get sloshed?

“You’re Arthur Anderson?” asked Officer Dignam.

Pop struggled to keep the slur out of his words while I tried to keep him a safe distance from the cop. “Yes. I’m Arthur.”

“Where were you tonight, sir?”

His mouth worked like a hand puppet’s, but no sound came out.

“He was meeting with a client,” I said.

“Have you been drinking?”

“No,” said Pop. “I haven’t.” His hands remained entangled in my hair, squeezing my head with such force that I worried he might pop it off if he wasn’t careful.

Pop had nothing but respect for the police, but I knew it wasn’t a two-way street. Private eyes, even properly licensed ones, were viewed as meddlers who took advantage of people who were too impatient to let the law do its job. Uncle Adam used to bribe the officers that worked his beat to keep them on his side, but Pop had made no such effort. If we barely had money for rent, how could we be expected to grease the mitts of local law enforcement?

“You sure about that?” asked Officer Dignam.

He walked toward Pop. Another step and he’d have all the olfactory confirmation he needed. And then what? Having caught Pop in one lie, would he insist that meant there were others to uncover? Probably. And then what had started as a simple break-in investigation would turn into a close examination of Pop’s business practices.

“It’s his leg,” I said.

“What?”

“Go on, Pop. Show him. You must be in awful pain.”

From across the room, Mrs. Mrozenski nodded encouragingly. “I’ll get your pills, Arthur.” While she left to retrieve the vial from his room, I helped Pop wiggle the leg loose. It dropped to the floor with a thud. His thigh was hot to the touch.

“He’s a Pearl Harbor vet,” I said. “And quite frankly, he doesn’t know his limits.”

“Now, Iris—”

“Don’t
now Iris
me. Ten hours on your feet? And for what? So some fat cat can get proof that his wife is cheating. And now you’re going to be bed-bound for a day. It’s not worth it.”

He waved me off, aware that the less he said, the better.

“Show some respect, young lady,” said Officer Dignam.

“Yes, sir,” I said. Mrs. Mrozenski returned with the pills and gave Pop a strong cup of Postum to wash them down with.

“It looks like your business office was the focus of the break-in, Mr. Anderson. We’ll need you to let us know what, if anything, is missing. Perhaps it would be easier for you to wait until morning?”

“Yes, I’d appreciate that,” said Pop.

“She broke into your cabinet, Pop,” I said.

“She?”

“Your daughter said the intruder was a woman. What’s in this cabinet?”

“Nothing really,” said Pop. “Just personal papers and some case files.”

My eyebrows went up at that. Since when had he started locking up case files? “People assume if there’s a lock, there’s a reason,” said Officer Dignam. “Your would-be robber probably assumed that’s where you stashed your cash.”

Pop smiled. “If I had cash to stash, it would be in a bank.”

“Still, take a look around when you feel up to it. If something is missing, no matter how small, you’ll want to report it, just to be safe.”

THEY WERE GONE by two a.m. By then, the Postum had eradicated all signs of Pop’s evening activities and I’d cleared the kitchen of every shard of glass I could find. One of the officers helped us secure the broken window and door panes with boards and then left us alone to sort out why this had happened.

“I’m sorry,” said Pop when the police had left. “I’ll fix the windows.”

“Is not your fault,” said Mrs. Mrozenski.

“I should’ve been here.”

She clicked off the overhead light, leaving only the fixture above the kitchen sink burning. “Everyone is safe. Is all that matters.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. She left and Pop and I sat in the near darkness for a while, listening to the kitchen clock count down the minutes until dawn.

“Why were you drinking tonight?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. But he did know. I could hear it in his voice. And then it dawned on me why he’d chosen tonight of all nights to get soused.

“The Navy casualty numbers are out,” I said.

“How do you know that?”

“Mrs. Mrozenski told me.”

“That’s not something she should be sharing with you.” Even as he condemned her for it, I thought I could hear the slightest hint of relief in his voice that I was privy to the same information he was, even if it didn’t weigh on me in exactly the same way.

“Fifteen thousand already dead or wounded. That’s a lot of men in a short time,” I said. He nodded at his drained mug. “You must know some of them, right?”

“The odds are good.” Where I saw an enormous figure that might one day eclipse the lives of the boys I went to school with, he saw the individual faces of men he’d served with. How agonizing that had to be. It was one thing to have to commemorate Pearl Harbor every single time you tried to take a step, but to know that you weren’t the only one who suffered, but just one of the first ones? I would’ve gotten drunk, too.

“I’m so sorry, Pop.”

He reached out and smoothed a strand of hair out of my face. “God, you’re so much like her.” It was so rare that he mentioned Mama that it took my breath away. “She would’ve been proud of you tonight, protecting me like that. Thank you. I promise you, I won’t leave you alone like that again.” He left the table and hobbled over to the stove to refill his cup. “You must’ve been terrified.”

“It all happened so quickly.” Was I really like Mama?

“You did everything right: calling the police, hiding.”

I had, hadn’t I? I might not have had the right instincts when I tailed Mrs. Wilson all those weeks before, but I’d grown wiser since then. And—boy, howdy—Pop had noticed!

“You should get to bed, Iris.”

“What about you?”

“I need to check the office.”

I told him good night and headed out of the kitchen. Rather than going to my room, though, I lingered at the top of the stairs and watched him limp into the office. He cursed beneath his breath as he surveyed the damage.

I couldn’t help myself. I went downstairs and joined him.

“Is something missing, Pop?”

He was looking at the broken cabinet. Some of the papers that had once been inside it had spilled onto the floor, including his notes on the Barney case.

“I’m not sure.”

“Do you think it’s related to one of your cases?”

“I don’t know.” He slowly bent to retrieve the scattered pages. “You get to bed. You look exhausted.”

I told him I would, though I was certain there was no chance I was going to sleep that night.

I STARED AT THE CEILING, trying to sort through who would’ve broken into our house. Clearly it had to do with Tom Barney. If nothing was missing, then whoever it was wanted a good look at the case file to see what it contained. And that meant whoever it was had to know Pop was working on the case.

I took in a breath so sharply that it pierced my lungs. Grace had gone into Pop’s office when she visited and was looking at what was sitting on his desk. I’d also told her he was investigating the case. She could’ve come back here, hoping to get a longer look at his files. Or perhaps she’d told Josephine about them and she was the one I’d heard swearing as the police arrived.

I eventually slept, much to my amazement. When I finally awoke, the light coming in my bedroom was so bright I winced in pain. I turned to look at my bedside clock and was shocked to discover it was almost noon.

I threw on a robe and rushed down the stairs. Pop wasn’t there, but Mrs. Mrozenski was.

“So you finally wake. What a night we had.”

“I’m missing school,” I said, just in case the rest of the world had forgotten it was a weekday.

“Your father called the school this morning, said you were sick. He did not think you would be up for classes after last night.”

“Oh.” I sat on the sofa arm, unable to process having a whole day with nothing to do. I was touched that Pop let me sleep in. Could we finally be turning a corner? “Where is he?”

“He went to get glass to fix windows. He be back soon. I make breakfast. You must be starved.”

I admitted that I was and let her ply me with fried eggs and toast. When the meal was done and the dishes washed, I changed into clothes and went into Pop’s office. My plan was clear: I wanted to see if anything was missing from Tom Barney’s folder. The cabinet was open when I entered the room, the contents gone. Pop had wised up and moved everything while I slept.

AS I WAITED for Pop to return, I tried to decide the best way to come clean to him. I could claim that I’d stumbled into the case, not realizing that the boy I’d met at school and who had gone missing was someone Pop had been hired to find. But how to explain Grace? He would have to know I’d started an investigation on my own. No, maybe instead I should tell him that my dear friend Grace was in trouble and I needed his help before someone got hurt. She was dating this guy I went to school with named Tom Barney …

The front door opened and Pop came in. He was toting something large and flat that had been wrapped in brown paper and secured with twine—no doubt glass he’d just had cut at the glazier. “This way,” he directed someone traveling behind him. “It goes in the room to your left. Let’s put it on the floor of the closet.”

Two men entered behind him, weighted down by a heavy black object it took every ounce of their shared strength to carry.

“You’re up,” said Pop with a smile directed my way. “Good.”

No, I would be totally honest with him. It was time. “What’s that?”

“A safe,” he said as the men grunted their way into the office. “I think last night proved that we need to be a little more secure around here.”

“Can we afford it?”

“We don’t have a choice.” He leaned the glass against the wall. “There’s something that I want to talk to you about.”

Had last night proven to him that I could be trusted to help him work on his cases?

“What’s the story, morning glory?” I said, aping Suze.

He gave me a funny look. “Where were you yesterday afternoon?”

“What do you mean?”

“I called the school this morning to tell them you were sick, and they said they were glad to hear that since you missed your last class yesterday.”