The Girl Is Murder (30 page)

I moved the dirty dishes to the dresser and fluffed Grace’s pillows. Beneath them was a shoebox full of letters—V-mail, I realized, the kind that had come from soldiers overseas. I picked up the box, intending to find its lid and store it. But the topmost note caught my eye. It was signed by Tom.

“Dear Grace,” it began. “Basic training is pretty much what you’d expect. The food is awful, the company worse, but thinking about your smiling face is getting me through it. I’m going to make you proud, I promise you that. If you want a soldier, I’ll be a soldier.”

It was dated almost a month before. And it wasn’t the only one. A more recent letter written by a friend in his platoon told the sad tale of his death.

So she knew. All this time she had known exactly what had happened to him.

“What are you doing?” Grace came into the room and launched toward me.

“I was trying to tidy up the room. This was under your pillows.”

She grabbed for the box. “Give me that.”

I relented. After all, I didn’t need the box anymore. “I don’t understand—you knew? Why didn’t you say something?”

“He asked me not to.”

I felt like I was trying to work out a math problem someone had posted on the chalkboard at Chapin. My brain just wasn’t prepared for work that difficult. “So then why say anything to me about him?” She’d been in Pop’s office. The Barneys’ file had been out in plain sight. She must’ve suspected that Pop had been hired to find him, and her visit to the Lower East Side had been an attempt to confirm that. And then the break-in—that had been her coming back to get a better look at things without my interrupting her. “You knew Pop was looking for him, didn’t you? Before I told you?”

She slid the box onto a bookshelf beside a copy of
Little Women.
“I suspected as much when you showed up at my house. The coincidence was too much, especially since we hadn’t talked in so long.”

“If you knew what Tom was up to, why the big act? Help me out, Grace.”

Her eyes blazed beneath the shadows cast by the bandages. “There’s nothing to help you with. What Tom did, he did on his own.”

“Then why this big charade?” She didn’t respond. Something still wasn’t adding up, and she knew I knew it. “Josephine was telling the truth, wasn’t she? You were never in love with Tom. You’re the one who gave him the ultimatum, not her. You told him that if he wanted to be with you, he had to put on a uniform and pick up a gun.” I was shaking. How could someone who was once so close to me turn out to be such a liar?

Perhaps the same way that I had.

“Why did you break into Mrs. Mrozenski’s house? Did Pop find something that tied you to Tom?”

“What are you talking about? I didn’t break into your house.”

“Still, you hoped he’d go away and that would be the end of it. You made him enlist.”

“I didn’t make him do anything. If he thought he had to join up to be with me, he reached that decision on his own.”

“But you did nothing to stop him.”

“Oh, bother! He wouldn’t leave me alone. You don’t know what it was like with all the calls, the letters, the visits. It was humiliating, Iris. So I told him the only way I would ever be with him was if he enlisted. It was his choice to follow through on it.”

I stared at her—I couldn’t help it. Who was she? The Grace I’d known had never been this self-absorbed. Or maybe she had been, but I’d been too self-absorbed myself to notice. “He’s dead, Grace. Don’t you feel anything?”

“Of course I’m sorry about that, but it’s not like I killed him. Half those boys I danced with last night are going to die in this war. That’s what war is. It’s sad and awful but it’s not my fault.”

She was right. No matter how much I wanted to blame her for Tom’s death, she wasn’t the only cause. Even if he hadn’t gone, there was no guarantee that when he turned eighteen his number wouldn’t have come up in the draft. Maybe it wouldn’t have been a training accident then, but he could’ve been killed all the same.

“Why would you try to blame Josephine? I thought she was your friend?”

She rolled her eyes. “Hardly. She’s a scholarship student.”

“So?”

She crossed her arms. “So I didn’t know that when I first met her. She should’ve told me from the get-go. You know what Chapin’s like.”

I was wrong that Rhona and Josephine were cold. In that moment I’d never seen anyone colder than Grace Dunwitty.

“Who are you?” I said.

A smile bloomed across her face. “The same girl I’ve always been. You’re the one who’s changed.”

I WAS SO DISTURBED by my meeting with Grace that I went straight to the Barneys’ house, hoping to find Pop. He was still inside as I arrived, his familiar silhouette seated in the parlor with Mr. and Mrs. Barney. I remained outside sitting on the curb until he was done.

“What are you doing here, Iris? Is everything all right?”

I stood and went to him. This wasn’t the kind of thing to talk about on the street and yet I knew if I waited a moment longer to get it out, I’d explode. “Grace made him do it.”

“Made who do what?”

“She made Tom enlist. She said she wouldn’t continue dating him if he didn’t.”

He took my arm and pulled me away from the house. “Are you sure?”

“Positive. She has letters from him where it’s clear he’s doing it for her.”

He lowered his voice and seemed to be imploring me to do the same. “How do you know this? Did you go see her?”

I could see what was coming: another lecture about how disobedient I was. “Damn it, Pop—this isn’t about me.” I shocked him with the profanity, I could see that. “Yes, I went there. I thought I owed it to her to tell her what really happened to Tom. I was going to console a friend who was about to find out the boy she loved was dead. And if that makes me a bad kid in your eyes, then I guess that’s what I am.” I shook free of his grip and started up the Barneys’ walk.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to tell the Barneys.”

He gently took my hand in his. “No, Iris. They don’t need to know the why behind this.”

“But he’d be alive if she hadn’t manipulated him.”

His other hand found mine and squeezed. “And she’s going to have to live with that. But as awful as what she did was, it’s not a crime.”

“But still—”

“Honey, right now they think their son was trying to turn his life around. Whether they know the truth or not, the outcome is still the same. He’s still dead. Understand?”

I nodded. He was right. What good could come from letting them know that Tom did what he did to please a spoiled rich girl? All it would do would increase the sense that his loss was absolutely pointless.

I let Pop pull me toward the street. As we started home, I thought about Mr. Barney, about how easily he’d given up on his own flesh and blood. Tom wasn’t perfect, but he was hardly the terrible boy he made him out to be. And while no crime may have been committed, beyond Tom’s insatiable need to please people who didn’t deserve the effort, I had to wonder if Tom’s desire to make Grace happy wasn’t rooted in some similar desire to please his pop.

“Have you given up on me?” I asked Pop.

“Why would you ask that?”

I shrugged, unable to put what I was thinking into words.

“I wish you were more cautious, Iris. But I can’t say I’m surprised that you’re not, given who your mother was.” He winked at me. “When we first met she took me to a Yorkville dance hall. It was supposed to be for Germans only, but she paraded me inside with a look on her face that dared anyone who had a problem with me being there to challenge her. No one did. I asked her later why she took me there and she told me that she figured if she could get me into someplace restricted to Germans, it would be a lot easier to get people to accept that she was marrying me when the time came.”

I’d never heard the story before, but it didn’t surprise me. Mama claimed she knew she wanted to be Pop’s wife from the first second she saw him. “If you understand that I’m like Mama, why can’t you let me help you?”

He didn’t answer me.

“I’m going to keep at it, Pop. I can keep doing it behind your back and making mistakes, or you can teach me how to be safe. The choice is yours.”

He was silent for half a block. Just as I was starting to think that he was never going to respond, he paused before a row house with a low wrought-iron fence. “If I agree to this, will you follow my rules and only do exactly what I tell you to?”

“Absolutely.”

He rubbed his chin, where that day’s beard growth peeked through the smooth skin, adding contour and dimension to his face. He may not have known me, but I was kidding myself if I thought I knew him. “Maybe we can give it a try. But you play by my rules. No more lies and no more secrets. I can’t work with you if I can’t trust you.”

“All right,” I said.

“And I need you to trust me. I promise you we won’t starve to death or end up on the streets. Things are hard right now, but they’re not desperate.” That was good to know. “I don’t pretend to know what it’s been like for you, Iris. I know it’s been hard. I know I’m not the parent you would’ve chosen if it had been left up to you.”

I didn’t argue with him. After all, I’d made a pledge to be honest. “Why did she do it, Pop?”

“I wish I could tell you. I don’t think we’ll ever know, and that’s the worst part, isn’t it? That she could do something so terrible and not even leave us understanding why.”

Tears squeezed past my nose and landed on the sidewalk in front of me. “Do you think I did something that upset her?”

“No. Absolutely not. This had nothing to do with you, I’m certain of that.”

“I’ve heard things—”

He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket. “Idle gossip, Iris. That’s all. Everyone wants a reason, and sometimes they come up with the worst explanations possible, even when there’s no basis for it. To them, any answer is better than no answer.”

I mopped at my eyes and wiped my nose. “I don’t think I can forgive her if I don’t know why she did it.”

“That’ll change,” he said. “You’ll see.”

“I dream about her,” I said. “In my dreams she’s always alive.”

He nodded. “Mine, too.”

I was surprised. I had no doubt that Pop missed her, but it never occurred to me that he dreamed about her, too.

He put his hand on my head and ruffled my hair. “You know how when you dream Mama is still alive and then you wake up, you have to suffer her loss all over again? In my dreams I’m running. And then when I wake up—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

CHAPTER

22

I CALLED PEARL and let her know the ugly end to the story of Tom Barney. She cried at the news. Like me, she didn’t want to believe something tragic could happen to someone our own age. Just because it was the war that had done it, or the desire to be part of it at least, didn’t make Tom’s end any easier. Just more inexplicable.

There were more people I had to talk to.

I found Rhona at Normandie’s after school. She sat at the counter drinking an egg cream while Suze divided her time between her and a booth filled with other customers. Rhona started when she saw me, but quickly recovered, setting her jaw in a way that made it clear she wasn’t going to let me ruffle her. “Well, if it isn’t the girl detective.”

“I need to talk to Suze and you,” I said.

“Suze is busy. And I’m not in the mood for your off-time jive.”

On cue, Suze eyeballed me and darted into the restroom.

Boy, howdy—they weren’t going to make this easy. “I thought you might want to know about Tom.”

Rhona squared her shoulders. “Go on.”

“He’s dead, Rhona.”

The tough-girl act vanished. “Was it that girl Josephine?”

I shook my head. “He enlisted in the Army. He was killed during a training exercise.”

Her eyes looked wet. Anger flashed behind the tears. “Tommy enlisted? Why?”

I searched my pockets for a handkerchief, as Pop had done for me. “He did it for Grace. She convinced him it was the only way she’d continue seeing him.”

She took the handkerchief, but didn’t use it. Instead, she mashed it in her hands and twisted it until I expected the fabric to tear in half. Grace would get hers. Rhona would make sure of it.

“Thanks for telling me,” she whispered. It was obvious she wanted me to leave so she could be alone with her thoughts, but I wasn’t done yet.

“I’ve been trying to figure something out,” I said. “How did you put together who my pop was?”

“Your friend Pearl Harbor told me.”

“But see, I think you knew before then and she only confirmed it. You were at my house, weren’t you?”

Her expression said it all. She’d been there all right, going through Pop’s files.

“You came to get the note. The one you’d written the doctor’s address on. 240 Houston Street.” It was the i’s dotted with circles that had given it away. The same i’s that had been in the notes to Principal Deluca that Rhona had forged for Tom.

She stared at me and I could see how surprised she was that I’d put it together.

“You were pregnant,” I whispered. “Not last year when Pearl started the rumor, but this fall, right before Tommy started breaking into lockers. He’d never done anything outright illegal until then. He did that for you, didn’t he? He wanted to get money to help you. And then you dumped him.”

“I didn’t want him tied to a girl like me. I’m nothing. I’m always going to be nothing. He was better than that, even if he didn’t know it yet.”

It was funny how a girl everyone thought was bad news saw the potential in Tom, while someone like Grace couldn’t wait to tear him down.

“So why did you steal the note?” I asked.

“I was worried your pop would put it together and word would get back to Tom’s old man. If he did come back, I didn’t want that hanging over him.” What was it like to fear the people you were supposed to love? I hoped I never found out. “So I guess you’re going to tell everyone.”

Did she really think I was that kind of person? “You already suffered plenty of humiliation last year. I won’t put you through that again.” I started to leave, then stopped myself. “Of course, I could go to the police about the break-in.”