The Girl Is Murder (6 page)

“It’s Mrs. Wilson and the man she’s been seeing. I caught them at the Plaza last night.”

“You followed them there?”

I didn’t respond. It still wasn’t clear if he wanted to praise Caesar or bury him.

“How did you get into the hotel room?”

This was good. We’d bypassed
Why were you out so late?
and
What possessed you to go uptown alone?
“I told the maid I was staying there and got her to unlock the door for me.”

He stared down at the photos. “They must’ve seen you.”

“I got out of there pretty fast.” It hadn’t occurred to me that I shouldn’t be seen. The goal was to take a picture, not preserve my anonymity, right? And besides, what did it matter if Mrs. Wilson saw me? She was the one doing something wrong. “I was surprised by how young he was. Do you think that was the draw—that he was younger than Mr. Wilson?”

“Maybe. Or it could be …” Whatever he was about to say vanished and he turned his attention back to me. “They probably called the hotel detective and reported you. Did you talk to anyone? Give them your name?”

“No, of course not.” My hands danced in and out of my pockets. This wasn’t going the way I’d hoped. I’d done well, hadn’t I?

“It’s not right, Iris.”

“The pictures are clear. There’s no question what’s going on in them.”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. This isn’t your business.”

“I was trying to help.”

“You help by going to school. By making good grades and keeping your nose clean. This isn’t a business for women.”

Since when was I a woman?

He waved the photos at me. “Don’t do this again.”

“All right.”

“I mean it, Iris. If the wrong person saw you, if this man in the photo decided to come after you to get the film, what would you have done?”

I shrugged. I saw no point in hypothetical questions. Those things hadn’t happened, so what did it matter? “Run, I guess.”

“And if he had a gun?”

Ducked,
I thought about saying, but even I knew that was too snotty. “I don’t know.”

“Exactly. You’re a child. Be a child.” And with that he tossed the photos into the garbage can.

I was heartsick that night. I understood his point: it could’ve been dangerous. If something had gone wrong, I wouldn’t have known how to react. But was it really fair to ask me to sit around and do nothing when the rent was late and Uncle Adam had been invoked and I was capable of helping?

As I lay in bed, staring at the few pieces of furniture that had been moved from our uptown address, my anger grew. My old Shirley Temple doll grinned at me from the dresser, her bold blue eyes staring blankly at a space just beyond me. The framed photo I’d gotten from my Deanna Durbin fan club membership smiled from the nightstand, her upper body bisected by her signature. Why had I kept these things when we moved? They didn’t belong here any more than I did. Didn’t Pop see how miserable I was? Didn’t he understand that for one brief twenty-four-hour period I’d felt like I had a purpose?

Didn’t he know how much I missed Mama?

I pinched a blanket and rubbed the satiny edge between my fingers. It was my baby blanket, a pink knitted thing much too small to do anything more than get lost in my sheets. But ever since I was born, or so Mama claimed, it was the talisman I turned to when I needed something to help soothe me to sleep. One rub of the fraying satin edge and whatever worries I had would melt away.

It wasn’t working. I was too tense for sleep. If I didn’t say something to him, the hours would pass and I’d find myself too exhausted to function the next day. And—boy, howdy—the last thing I needed to do was battle P.S. 110 on too little sleep.

I stuffed the blanket under my pillow, put on my robe, and pattered down the stairs. Pop was still in his office, typing up case notes. I cleared my throat to get his attention.

The typewriter ceased its noise. “What are you still doing up, Iris?”

“I can’t sleep.”

He cocked his head toward the kitchen. “Why don’t you make yourself some warm milk?”

I took a step backward, but my feet refused to do anything more. The time for speaking up was now. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I was trying to help.”

He addressed the handwritten notes he’d been transcribing. “I know that.”

“No, you don’t. There are all these signs around school about how we can help with the war effort by collecting clothes and cans. If the government wants my help, how come you won’t accept it?”

He lifted his head, finally meeting my eyes. “This isn’t a business for little girls.”

Before I was a woman; now I was a little girl? What had changed in the last few hours, other than my clothes? “Pop, I know I made mistakes. But I can learn. I can be good at this. I want to be good at this.”

“In four years, if you feel the same way, we’ll talk. Now go back to bed.”

He was being a father for the first time since he had returned home, and rather than relishing it, I resented it. He missed five years of my life, the five years when he could’ve sent me to my room and I’d have had to accept it. But those days were past. Who we were now didn’t allow for that relationship. I couldn’t go back to being Iris Anderson, privileged girl on the Upper East Side, and he couldn’t be a father who sent me to my room without giving me a good reason for it.

“No,” I said.

He was shocked. That much was clear.

I marched over to the wastebasket and fished out the 8 × 10s. I put them on the desk in front of him. “I know we need money. I know you can’t do everything anymore. I made mistakes. I admit it. But I worked hard to get these. I studied the file. I memorized Mrs. Wilson’s face. I figured out how to get the photos developed without anyone being wise.” Sort of. “And I’m going to keep working at it. You can throw out the pictures. You can criticize my efforts. Or you can accept my help and teach me to do a better job the next time. It’s your choice, Pop, but I’m not going away.”

He sighed heavily. In the movies, if Deanna Durbin had stood up for herself like this, she would’ve gotten exactly what she wanted, followed by an emotional embrace that cemented the fact that, even if she was standing up for herself, she would always be Daddy’s little girl.

There would be no hugs and tears for me. That’s not who we were.

He picked up the photos and examined them more closely. “What camera did you use?”

“My Brownie.” It felt like a betrayal. After all, Uncle Adam had given it to me.

He held a photo up to the lampshade. “These shots are grainy. The light quality isn’t very good.”

“It was night. There wasn’t a lot of light in the room.”

“They saw you. Detectives have to be invisible. No one’s going to forget a child with a camera.”

Child?
Seriously? “I can be discreet.”

“I can’t use these.” He dumped them back into the trash can.

I stared at him, willing the tears I knew wanted to come to wait until I left the room so I could retain a little dignity. But then why not let him see me cry? He deserved to know how much his decision had stung.

“You’re making a mistake,” I said between trembling lips.

He shook his head at me, and the ripples on his forehead grew four feet deep. “That’s the way you see it. From where I sit, I’m finally doing the right thing.”

THE NEXT AFTERNOON I arrived home early from school and discovered Pop’s office door closed. From inside came the familiar sound of Mr. Wilson. He had come by to retrieve the photos—
my
photos—and return the money he’d taken from Pop. I waited for him to ask how Pop had finally gotten the shot after all those failed attempts, but he never did. He didn’t care how Pop had done it; all he cared was that the job was done.

I could barely contain my excitement. Surely Pop had changed his mind and was ready to give me a chance to show him what I could do.

Mr. Wilson tipped his hat at me as he exited the office. I feigned interest in
Ten Cent Love Story Magazine
, a romance slick that Mrs. Mrozenski had brought home with the groceries.

When Pop returned from walking Mr. Wilson out, I was waiting for him with my arms crossed, shoulders squared. “I thought you threw the photos away.”

“I didn’t think you’d be home yet.”

“We had early dismissal today.”

Pop unfurled a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and passed it my way. “Here.”

“So does this mean you’ve changed your mind?”

“No.” He put the money on the coffee table in front of me. “Take the money. I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you. Buy yourself something for school.” He turned to head back into the office. In another thirty seconds his door would be closed, and then who knew how many hours would pass before he’d talk to me again.

“He said the photos were good, right?”

He froze and his back turned rigid. His left shoulder was higher than his right one. “That’s not the point, Iris.”

“Then what is?”

He sighed heavily—had he always relied on sighs to convey emotion?—and spun back toward me. “Do you know why that man wanted me to follow his wife?”

“Because she was having an affair.”

“No. Because he wants out of his marriage. His mistress wants him to get a divorce and he doesn’t want to lose her, but he doesn’t want to lose his money, either. So he’s held out until he has something on his wife that will make the separation go a little more smoothly. Those photos you took just guaranteed that his wife won’t get one red cent in the divorce settlement.”

I was having a hard time connecting the dots. “So he was cheating on her first? That doesn’t seem fair.”

Pop suddenly looked uncomfortable, and not just because his leg was bothering him. “It’s the way the law works, Iris. They don’t care who behaved badly first. All they care about is who can prove it. These people I work for, they aren’t all good people. They aren’t always asking me to help them do good things. A lot of them are like Mr. Wilson; they want proof that someone else is doing something wrong so that they can justify their own bad actions. I don’t want you around that.”

Poor Mrs. Wilson, with her under-eye bags and her desperate smile, was going to have her goose cooked because of me. A knot tightened in my stomach. “If you knew that was what he was up to, why did you take his money?”

“Because there are bills to pay and no one but me to pay them.” He looked tired. I wasn’t the only one who’d spent half the night awake. “It can be ugly, the things I’m asked to do. But I’m not being paid to make judgments, understand? And it’s a good thing, too, because sometimes who’s right and who’s wrong isn’t always so cut-and-dried. When I’m hired by a client, I’m only privy to a small part of the story.”

So that’s how he justified dealing with the Mr. Wilsons of the world.

“Many of the people I’m hired to look into don’t want me to find out what I’m trying to find out. Often there’s money at stake for them—sometimes something that’s even more valuable. This job can be dangerous. That’s what I was trying to explain to you last night. If you’re seen, if they know where to find you, some of them will do whatever they can to make sure you don’t do your job. Understand?”

I wasn’t the only one at risk; he was in danger, too. That had never occurred to me before. I may not have known Pop very well, but I certainly wasn’t prepared to lose him. Ever since he’d come home, I’d just assumed he was safe.

But he was more vulnerable than ever. He might’ve had the experience to know what to do when, but I was the only one of us with two good legs.

“So what are you going to do the next time someone hires you to follow his wife?” I asked.

“Do what I did this time, I imagine.”

“But you couldn’t do it this time.”
I had to do it for you,
I almost said.
And I can run. At least I stand a chance at getting away.
“What happens if they take the job to Uncle Adam instead? Mrs. Mrozenski isn’t always going to be willing to take the rent late, you know.”

He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. Had I said too much? Would he disappear into his office and never come out again? “How do you know all that?”

“I just do.”

He rubbed at his upper thigh, just above the prosthetic. His face took on an ashen hue and his features momentarily pinched. He was late taking his pills.

The pain he felt wasn’t just the chafing and discomfort from the prosthetic. When he first came home, Aunt Miriam had warned me about something called phantom pain.
It only happens to amputees,
she’d said.
The severed nerves go haywire and sometimes the person missing a limb swears they can feel pain in the arm or leg that’s not there anymore.
I’d seen it with my own eyes, how Pop would move to scratch the calf that wasn’t, his hand brushing the air beneath his knee the way Roland Young’s hand passed through Cary Grant’s ghostly body in
Topper.

But Aunt Miriam was wrong about one thing: phantom pain didn’t just happen to amputees. Anyone who’d experienced a sudden loss could fall victim to it. I felt it every time I entered a room and expected to see Mama, only instead of clusters of severed nerves going haywire, it was my heart that seized in agony.

“Do you want me to get your pills?” I asked Pop.

“No. Not yet.” He continued rubbing. “Not every job is going to be like this one. I’m still a good detective.”

“I’m not saying you’re not.”

He held up his finger to signal that he wasn’t done talking. “I can’t do what I need to do if I’m worrying about your safety. I appreciate that you want to help, but you can do a lot more good staying at home where I know where you are and where Mrs. Mrozenski can keep an eye on you.”

Tears crested at the corners of my eyes. I was supposed to be the dutiful daughter who did her homework, ate her vegetables, and went to bed with a smile on her face. Why did I have to be a girl? Maybe if he’d had a son, he would’ve been more willing to trust me.

I sniffled, more loudly than I’d intended. “Maybe I could—”

His face hardened into a slab of granite. “This isn’t open for discussion, Iris. Hate me if you want, but this is my decision to make, not a fifteen-year-old girl’s. Now go to your room.”