Mom Meets Her Maker

by James Yaffe

  I didn’t talk to her long—Mom was in the room, sitting a few feet away from me. Sure enough, after I hung up, Mom said, in an airy voice, as if she hardly had her mind on what she was saying, “So who was that? A friend of yours? The voice sounded nice and cultured. A woman’s voice, or am I mistaken?”

  As a matter of fact, Saturday turned out to be a great evening. I found out, over spaghetti, that we shared exactly the same taste in movies. After dinner we went up to her place and watched His Girl Friday on her VCR. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell exchanged cynical wisecracks, and my hostess and I laughed our heads off, and an hour or two later I found myself wondering if I might not believe in God after all.

  EPILOGUE

  Mom Praying

  Dear God,

  All right, You’re probably surprised to see me here. I know I’m not the type that spends a lot of time in this place. I wouldn’t be here in the middle of a weekday when there’s nobody else around, if it wasn’t a matter of importance.

  It’s about this murder, naturally. All right, the murder is ancient history, it was all solved and wrapped up and put away in the closet a couple months ago, on Christmas day, and since then everybody is telling my son Davie what a fine job he did and how smart he is, which I’m certainly not unhappy to hear. But what You know is that the whole truth and nothing but didn’t come out yet. And You know that I know it too.

  Which is why I’m here, why I’m talking to You now. Dear God, am I wrong to keep my mouth shut about this? Am I doing a terrible thing which forever into eternity You’ll be angry at me for doing? I did it only because I thought it was for the best, I didn’t mean to do something wrong. How could I lie to You about that? All these years You’ve been acquainted with me, how could I expect to fool You about my feelings and my motives and so on? But even so, maybe I’m wrong, and I should open my mouth and come out with the truth.

  In other words, dear God, I’m full of doubts. I’ll tell You the whole story—which naturally You know already, but I have to tell it anyway—and then I’m hoping You’ll give me Your honest opinion.…

  Besides, it isn’t as if I let a murderer go free. This Victor Kincaid, I proved he was guilty, and that’s what he was, guilty. This You know, and I’m sure You’ll take it into consideration. If I happened to do a little deceiving, a little covering up, and let’s face it a little outright lying, it wasn’t so the murderer would get away with his crimes, it was strictly to keep other things, important things, from coming out.

  For instance, all that business about the message that the murdered man wrote on his carpet in crayon. “GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH—we both know this had nothing to do with Victor Kincaid or with Francesca Fleming. We both know he didn’t write FRAN on the carpet, and he didn’t write KINC either. I made that up so Davie and Ann Swenson and everybody else would be thrown off the track.

  And we both know that Mrs. Candy wasn’t the one who saw those letters on the carpet and stretched them out into GOLD, et cetera. Who could believe that she, any more than her husband, could spell those long peculiar words correctly? All right, she had a better education than him, but I noticed right away that when she copied her husband’s posters for the church, she never corrected any of the spelling mistakes?

  So Mrs. Candy isn’t the fanatic that I smelled from the beginning in the woodpile. I told a slander about her, and for this I apologize, though she never knew I told it, it was never brought out in public, so it didn’t actually hurt her, did it? This You have to admit.

  What I had to hide from everybody, naturally, was that the letters Candy wrote on the carpet before he died weren’t FRAN or KINC but MYR. Which, with his terrible spelling, was the best he could do to write MEYER. In other words, it was Roger Meyer he was trying to blame for his murder, with his last ounce of energy.

  And how do I know this? Because of the way those letters were placed on the carpet. Smack up against the lefthand edge came GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND, after which, right underneath them, also smack against the lefthand edge, came MYRRH. What a peculiar arrangement, if the person who added on to Candy’s message started off with FRAN or KINC. Why not write MYRRH on the same line with GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND? Why carry it over into another line all by itself? It’s obvious why. The M in MYRRH was already up against the lefthand edge, this is where Candy put it. There was no room to put GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND to the left of it, so they had to go above it.

  So who made these additions? The first answer that came into my head was that Roger Meyer made them himself. He really did kill Candy, and he started to leave the house, and maybe he heard Candy groaning from the living room, so he went back there, and saw that Candy, who was now dead, had written MYR on the carpet. So Roger knew he had to add the other letters, or he’d be arrested for the crime.

  But pretty soon I realized this couldn’t be the explanation. First of all, I already proved, with pure logic, that the murderer was Victor Kincaid. (And later on, as You know, he confessed to the murder and right now he’s in prison, organizing protests against the lousy food.)

  Second of all, if Roger was the guilty party, look at all the things that must have happened while he was in Candy’s house—Candy lets him into the house, they have an argument, he kills Candy, he starts to leave, Candy tears open the crayon box, he writes a short message on the carpet, Roger comes back in, he changes Candy’s short message to a long one, he goes out again. But he wasn’t inside that house more than five minutes, according to old Luke Abernathy, the witness who was standing across the street. It isn’t possible all those things should happen in only five minutes.

  Third of all, when Roger was arrested and admitted he saw Candy’s body in the living room, he said he didn’t see any red-crayon message on the carpet. If Roger was the one that wrote the message, with the idea of hiding what Candy really wrote, wouldn’t he have said he saw it there when he was standing over Candy’s body? Wouldn’t he have to say this so we’d believe it was written there before he got to the scene of the crime?

  The reason Roger said he didn’t see that long message was because it wasn’t written yet when he found the body. If it had been there, he would’ve noticed it. But it was easy for a scared, mixed-up boy to overlook what actually was there, just those three letters MYR.

  Incidentally, along with the question who wrote that long message, I had to ask myself why did Candy write the short message? Why did he try to accuse Roger Meyer of killing him when he must’ve known that Roger didn’t do it, that it was Victor Kincaid who killed him? The answer to this I didn’t like very much, but there wasn’t any way to get around it. Candy wasn’t interested in exposing his real killer. It didn’t matter to him Victor Kincaid should go to jail for his murder. Candy wanted the police, the whole world, to think he was killed by Roger Meyer.

  The reason was, if the real killer got caught, then the truth about Candy’s real estate deal would also come out. And that would be the end of his reputation. The saint would look like a sinner, and for Candy this was the worst thing that could happen. In his opinion, it was necessary that people should go on thinking how holy he was. He was God’s missionary on earth—real estate swindles or not—and if people lost faith in him, they’d lose faith in God.

  You notice, when I’m talking about God in connection with this Candy, I don’t say “You.”

  And what would be the harm, he asked himself, if Roger Meyer was punished for the murder? Meyer the Jew. Wouldn’t it be a good thing that everybody should think the Jews killed this saintly Christian minister, just like they killed Jesus Christ? So he wrote MYR on the carpet, and then, with a little bit of life he still had in him, he pulled the phone down on the floor, dialed the Meyers’ number, and asked to speak to Roger. His voice was weak, practically a whisper—like Roger and his father both said—but this wasn’t because somebody was trying to disguise the voice, it was because Candy was close to dying.

  So when Roger got on the line, Candy told him to come over right away. Mayb
e he knew the front door would be open because, when Kincaid ran out of the house, Candy never heard him slam the door behind him.

  There’s the hidden fanatic, dear God. The dead man himself. Nobody took him serious, because he sounded like a used-car salesman instead of a Nazi from the movies. Everybody automatically said, ‘He’s a hypocrite, he don’t really believe what he’s preaching.’ Only he did believe. He was such a genuine believer he died telling a lie in God’s name. A fanatic, what else?

  Also a schmuck.

  Still, this don’t explain yet how those letters he wrote, MYR, got changed to GOLD, FRANKINCENSE, AND MYRRH. Between the time Roger ran away, which was around four-thirty, and the time Mrs. Candy got home from her shopping, which was around five-thirty, somebody came to the Candy house. This somebody found the front door open—Roger, when he ran out, forgot to slam it behind him, just like Kincaid forgot when he ran out earlier. So this somebody walked into the living room and saw the letters MYR on the carpet. Realizing right away that Candy was accusing Roger of murder, and wanting to cover up the accusation, this somebody changed the short message to the long one. And this somebody, in leaving the house, did slam the door, which is why Mrs. Candy found it locked when she got home.

  So who could this somebody be? It couldn’t be Roger’s parents, because at the time of Candy’s murder they were on the phone talking long distance to their daughter in Los Angeles. Also, Abernathy would’ve seen one or the other or both of them entering and leaving the house, but he didn’t mention anything about them.

  Another thing about this somebody. Isn’t it peculiar he, or maybe she, was in the house at that particular time? Who could it be, finding the front door of a house unlocked, is going to walk right in and wander into the living room, and after seeing a dead body there is going to walk out again without calling the police? To me it could only be somebody who knew ahead of time the body was going to be there. Maybe even somebody who came to that house because the body would be there.

  So who could have told this somebody? Not the murderer, Kincaid, who certainly didn’t want that anybody should know he knew about the body. So who else knew about the body? Nobody except Roger Meyer—and the person he told all about it ten or fifteen minutes after he ran away. The person he ran to, so he could hide out.

  Don’t go so fast, I told myself. You’re forgetting about Abernathy. He was standing outside Candy’s house until the police came. Didn’t he see this somebody come in and out? So explain why he never mentioned it.

  Quick as a flash, I answered myself: Abernathy did mention it. Only in his crazy way, with maybe a little too much alcohol in him. He said to Davie he saw “the dark betrayer” go into Candy’s house. He also said he saw “the fiend with the flat head” and “the Triangular Egg.” Who was “the dark betrayer”? To Abernathy, this religious maniac, what he saw was the representative, the symbol, of the biggest betrayers of all, the betrayers who killed Jesus Christ. And why did this fiend, in his eyes, have a “flat head”? Because the light wasn’t so good at five o’clock or so, and to Abernathy it looked like the top of this visitor’s head was sliced off. Instead of being shaped like an egg—which most heads are, more or less—this head was flat at the top, turning it into a triangle. A triangular egg.

  How could such an effect be produced?

  Didn’t I see it being produced on Christmas day, when Davie and I went to the Nutcracker Ballet? Didn’t the bad lighting make the old toymaker’s head look like the top of it was sliced off? Why? Because he was wearing a black skullcap. A yarmalke.

  And finally, there’s a clue which nobody remembers except me. And You, naturally.

  When Davie and Mrs. Swenson examined the scene of the murder, they noticed there was a picture of Jesus Christ over the fireplace, only its face was turned to the wall. Why would such a thing be done? Obviously because the person who did it was feeling guilty about something he or she was doing in the room and didn’t want Jesus to watch it happening. But what type person would this be?

  It couldn’t be any of the people we know were in the house that afternoon. Mrs. Candy, if she had actually changed FRAN or KINC to FRANKINCENSE, wouldn’t have felt guilty about it. She would’ve felt she was doing it as her religious duty, she would’ve been proud for Jesus to watch her do it. Same thing for Candy himself, writing MYR on the carpet to bear false witness against Roger Meyer. In Candy’s opinion this was an act that Jesus could only approve of.

  On the other hand, it couldn’t be Victor Kincaid, feeling guilty about committing the murder. Kincaid is a big atheist, he announces it in public, it’s part of his reputation that he don’t believe in You or in Jesus. He wouldn’t give two thoughts about killing somebody while Jesus was looking on.

  Besides, whoever did this, it was somebody who got to the house after the murder was over and after Roger Meyer ran away. How do I know this? Because Roger, when he told his story about finding the dead body, said that he saw Jesus Christ’s picture on the wall and it made him nervous because it reminded him he was Jewish. So the picture wasn’t turned to the wall yet when Roger was in the house.

  So who’s left? The person who came to the house and changed MYR to MYRRH and so on.

  This is when I remembered something that happened to my late cousin Sadie years ago when she was a young girl. She told her parents she was spending the weekend with friends of hers in the country, but actually she was spending it in one of those country inns with her boyfriend Irving. They checked into a room together, and they got all ready to have a little fun in the bed—You’ll excuse me mentioning these things so openly, but after all, if You don’t know all about them, who does?—when suddenly Sadie noticed, hanging from a hook on the wall of the room, a cross. And hanging from the cross was Jesus Christ, carved up in wood. The people that owned this inn were Catholics, and every one of the rooms had such a cross in it. So anyway, Sadie couldn’t go on with what she was doing until first she made Irving get up, stand on a chair, take the cross off the wall, and put it away in the bottom drawer of the dresser. It wasn’t logical, it didn’t make sense, and what’s more Sadie knew it. But she had to do it anyway.

  Incidentally, Sadie and Irving got married a few months later, and lived together for fifty-two years, with three children, so the story has a happy ending.

  But the point is, it was the same thing with this person who turned Candy’s picture of Jesus to face the wall. This person knew he was doing something in that room that wasn’t exactly right. This wouldn’t stop him from doing it—in fact, he came to the house especially to make sure there wouldn’t be any evidence to connect Roger Meyer with the murder—but still in his heart he knew he was breaking the law. And who is it, when he’s doing something definitely not kosher—or even when he isn’t—feels nervous that Jesus Christ should be looking at him all the time? It isn’t a Christian, it’s a Jew.

  Not only that, it’s a religious Jew. The more religious he is, the more self-conscious he feels about Jesus, the more he worries about doing something wrong with Jesus himself, the biggest Christian of all, as a witness. And particularly it’s so at this time of the year, at Christmastime, when for Jews it seems like everywhere they go they can’t get out from under Jesus Christ’s eye.

  All right, dear Lord, so now it was pretty clear to me who the somebody was—but maybe what You want to know is, why I’ve been keeping quiet about these deductions, why I never even told them to my own son. Well, this is exactly what’s bothering me now and why I’m here in the synagogue asking You for Your advice. I did keep quiet, I’m still keeping quiet even though Roger Meyer is in the clear and the real killer has already been found guilty and sent to jail, because how would it look, in this town that’s full of Christians who don’t much like Jews, if the most prominent local Jew, the man that represents his people in everybody’s eyes, is accused of tampering with evidence in a murder case? It certainly wouldn’t be good for the Jews.

  And incidentally, I’ve got a good idea this is
exactly why the rabbi—all right, what’s the point saying “somebody” when we both know who I’m talking about?—did the tampering in the first place? Part of it maybe because he thought Roger Meyer was innocent and didn’t want him falsely accused of the murder, but most of it, in my opinion, because it wouldn’t be good for the Jews.

  Even so, dear Lord, I’m not sure it’s right for me to go on keeping quiet. What happens when I finally meet You in the eternal life after the Messiah comes? Will You hold this lie against me already, even though I only told it with the best intentions, which I’m sure You know from looking into my heart? Because I was trying to protect my people, who are also Your people, does this make me in my own way another fanatic? Please God, do me a big favor, give me some guidance on this question.…

  … That’s it?

  All right, yes, I think I see the point. It isn’t being a fanatic if You’re trying to protect others against fanatics? Doesn’t the Talmud itself say it’s permissible to fight fire with fire? I’m positive that’s in the Talmud somewhere.

  Also, God, You love Your creations, You don’t go around getting mad at them for this or that little thing, unless it happens that they broke one of Your Commandments. And in all honesty, who can say I’ve done that? Show me where there’s a commandment against lying. Against bearing false witness, yes. A person definitely shouldn’t bear false witness against the neighbors or anybody else. But tell me please, what neighbor or other innocent party has been hurt by the lie I told? So what’s stopping You from forgiving me? Nothing.

  One more question I’d like to ask You. If I don’t make the truth public, shouldn’t I at least go to the rabbi privately and tell him what I figured out about him? Is it justice that he should think he got away scotch free with what he did?…

  … That’s Your answer, God?

  All right, all right, the truth is I knew this answer even before I asked the question. If I go to the rabbi and tell him from my deductions, my reason wouldn’t have anything to do with justice. My real reason—and I know You know it, and You know I know it—would be that I couldn’t resist the temptation to show the rabbi I’m smarter than he is. So I’m sorry, dear God. I withdraw the suggestion, and I hope You’ll excuse me that I ever came up with it in the first place.