The Question of the Unfamiliar Husband

by E. J. Copperman

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” I said. “I am Samuel Hoenig.”

  “Nice to meet you, Sam.” Siplowitz gestured toward a leather sofa on the wall opposite his desk, but Ms. Washburn took a seat on a matching leather chair in front of Siplowitz’s work space and indicated I should do the same. I complied, wondering if this was somehow symbolic. I would have to ask Ms. Washburn later.

  Neither Ms. Washburn nor I corrected Siplowitz on my name, however. I wanted to, but was concerned I might be perceived as impolite.

  “How can I help you two?” he asked, settling in behind his desk in a grander version of the chairs Ms. Washburn and I were utilizing. His had wheels. I did not correct him on his grammar, either. The error made replacing may with can is too common. If one were to point it out every time, it could take up too much of a day.

  “We are attempting to answer a question about the death of Oliver Lewis,” I told him. “I understand you were a friend of his.”

  Siplowitz shook his head. “You understand wrong. I knew Lewis, but we weren’t friends. I met him at a Bar Association function a couple of years ago. He wasn’t all that interesting, frankly, but women liked him and at the time that made him a good person for me to be around.” He leaned over in a “conspiratorial” pose toward Ms. Washburn. “Don’t tell my wife I said that, okay?”

  Another thing I would later have to ask Ms. Washburn to explain.

  “So you were not friends, but you did socialize; is that correct?” I asked.

  “Yes. For a while. Then I met Corrine and suddenly it wasn’t that important to be around a guy who could attract women.”

  “Tell us about Cynthia Maholm,” I said. I did not want to lead his answer with anything more than that—it was important to see what Siplowitz would volunteer.

  “I didn’t know a Cynthia Maholm,” he said.

  I gave him seven seconds, but there was no additional information offered. It made no sense that Siplowitz had never heard of Cynthia Maholm. Ms. Washburn looked less puzzled, but more suspicious.

  “If you didn’t know her, why did the mention of her name get us into your private office?” she asked.

  “Because the woman I know is named Sheila McInerney,” Siplowitz responded. I believe there might have been the hint of a smug smile as he spoke, but it might also have been that he needed to burp and felt he could not do so in our company. Either explanation was possible.

  “No matter her name, you did attend the woman’s wedding to Oliver Lewis, didn’t you?” I asked after a proper interval of three seconds, during which I had determined that Siplowitz’s office also housed a Phi Beta Kappa key preserved under glass in a corner next to a plaque reading, Howard J. Siplowitz, 1962.

  “Yes, I was there. I was at the party where Ollie met Sheila, so they invited me to the wedding. I talked to my wife about it, and we couldn’t come up with a believable excuse to avoid going, so we went. I like Connecticut well enough, anyway. We spent the night in a very cozy bed and breakfast in Norwalk. They had crepes for brunch on Sunday.”

  Before I could ask what was foremost in my mind, Ms. Washburn said to Siplowitz, “But you took pictures at the wedding, didn’t you? We were told you were sort of the unofficial photographer.”

  He waved a hand casually, indicating that what she had said was silly. “Who told you that—did Sheila? Haven’t you realized by now that you can’t trust a thing that woman says?”

  Again I was about to pose the question I’d been formulating, but Ms. Washburn, to her credit, was not about to let Siplowitz dismiss her. “Did you take pictures, and if so, may we see them?”

  This was now becoming an interesting and useful discussion. The question itself was fairly straightforward, naturally. But the effect it had on our subject was quite revealing: Siplowitz dropped his eyebrows to a very low position, leaned forward in his chair, and tightened the muscles around his mouth. His expression was exactly like one I remembered from social skills training over the word cross.

  “People don’t come here and talk to me like that,” he said in a low tone.

  I am certainly no expert on social intercourse, but it seemed to me that the lawyer’s reaction far exceeded its impetus. Ms. Washburn had merely asked about any potential photographs from the wedding of Oliver Lewis and Cynthia Maholm, and refused to let Siplowitz treat her as a triviality and evade the question. He was responding as if she had accused him of some minor illegality or said that he had been exceedingly rude.

  Ms. Washburn did not flinch. “I’m simply asking if there are pictures,” she said. “I don’t think what I said—”

  “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this,” the attorney went on. “I was nice enough to interrupt my day for you when you arrived without an appointment, and now I’m accused of lying in my own office!”

  “Nobody said you were lying,” I pointed out. “As far as I can tell, no one even implied it. You, sir, appear to be overreacting.”

  Siplowitz stood up abruptly and slapped his hands flat on the desk in front of him. Because there was no blotter but a mouse pad, one hand hit wood and the other fabric. The sound Siplowitz had probably intended came out as part sharp report and part splat.

  “That’s it,” he announced. “You have crossed the line. Please leave my office immediately or I’ll call building security and have you removed.”

  Ms. Washburn’s expression indicated that we were trapped in a room with a dangerous lunatic. She stood.

  I did not. “This building probably has only one security guard, and I doubt he or she is armed,” I said. “That would not be a very credible threat, even if we were violent or in some way dangerous, which we are not. We are merely asking about photographs. Do you have them?”

  “Out!” he shouted. “Maggie!”

  Perhaps he thought his secretary was the security detail he’d mentioned. “Ms. Caruso is your assistant,” I reminded him.

  This seemed to baffle Siplowitz; he stopped, his expression changing from furious to incredulous. “I know,” he said.

  Maggie appeared in the doorway looking alarmed. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  Siplowitz made a clear decision to return to his apoplectic state. “These people are threatening me!” he exclaimed. “Have security remove them!”

  I saw no point in continuing this discussion. “We are doing nothing of the kind,” I said for the benefit of Maggie and her employer. “But if you are this disturbed by our presence, we will certainly leave now. I have just one last question for you, Mr. Siplowitz.”

  The attorney’s voice dropped to a growl. “What is it?”

  “What did the bed and breakfast serve on the crépes?”

  “Blackberries,” Siplowitz said. “And they were delicious.”

  We left.

  sixteen

  It was now too late to set out for Darien, Connecticut, so Ms. Washburn apologized for suggesting the time-consuming detour to New Brunswick. But I told her on the drive to Questions Answered that our decision to meet Roger Siplowitz had probably provided more information about the question than the photographs of Oliver Lewis’s wedding could have.

  “Really? I didn’t see how we got any information out of that stuffed shirt.” I did not comment on the expression she’d used, but it has always been a source of some amusement to me. I tend to picture a shirt overflowing with the kind of stuffing served with roast turkey at Thanksgiving dinner when Mother invites our small coterie of family and one or two friends of hers.

  Perhaps this year I would invite Ms. Washburn and her husband. But it was possible Simon Taylor would not be amenable to visiting with me, as he believed she should not work for Questions Answered. Or perhaps they had some family obligation of their own for the holiday. It would be difficult to know whether such an invitation would cause Ms. Washburn more difficulty than pleasure. Social interactions are difficu
lt.

  “Samuel,” I heard her say. “You’re drifting.”

  I refocused my attention on the matter at hand. “My apologies,” I told Ms. Washburn. “Sometimes my thoughts do wander.” She nodded. “We must concentrate on finding Cynthia Maholm.”

  “I asked how we’d gotten more information out of Siplowitz than we could have from the wedding pictures,” she reminded me.

  “So you did. The fact is, Mr. Siplowitz, with his abrupt dismissal of us after we dared to ask about the wedding photographs, specifically his wedding photographs, indicates that there is indeed something being hidden, and that something might be visible in the official images taken by the justice of the peace. He would know we could go to Darien and get those. He was more concerned that we not see the photographs he took himself.”

  Ms. Washburn’s mouth twitched, not involuntarily. She was considering. “So how do we get to see them?”

  “That is a question we will have to tackle at a later time, although I have some ideas. First, there is finding Cynthia Maholm.”

  We arrived at Questions Answered three minutes later. Unlocking the door is something I do quite carefully during a normal week, but after having had a cadaver deposited on my floor, I was even more diligent about seeing that the office was secure. I saw Ms. Washburn fall back a bit, waiting for me to admit us, but also being more reticent about coming inside until I had turned on the light and determined nothing had been tampered with.

  “It’s quite safe,” I said as we entered.

  “I know.”

  I had decided, since Ms. Washburn had returned to Questions Answered, that her natural talents were plentiful, but she could be aided by understanding and applying my own methods of answering questions. She was already quite a useful member of the team, but with training, she could do much more than simply drive me from location to location and smooth out some of the more difficult moments my Asperger’s Syndrome engenders.

  As I turned on my Mac Pro, I asked her, “What do you think the best method would be to find Ms. Maholm?”

  Ms. Washburn did not engage in a pointless conversation about the reasons I would ask her a procedural question when I clearly had a plan in place already. She immediately answered, “There’s no point to going back to the apartment; she had clearly moved out. And there’s no sense in seeing if she left a forwarding address with the landlord. She’s probably paid up through the end of the month and hasn’t informed the owner she’s left.”

  I nodded. “Very good. So?”

  “If it were me, I’d see if I could find a friend or relative, someone who knew her well before the marriage to Oliver Lewis, and see where she’d go. She either has enough money to stay hidden in hotels indefinitely, which would require lots of fake IDs, or she has someone who’s willing to put her up.”

  I applauded. “Excellent, Ms. Washburn. Truly. Very insightful.”

  “So how’d I screw it up?”

  Her suspicion baffled me. “Why do you think you’ve made an error? Have I given you the impression you were not competent at what you do?” I asked.

  Ms. Washburn shook her head. “Never. But you’re always smarter than me.”

  “I am not, necessarily. But even if I am, you are certainly capable of analyzing a situation and finding the aspects of it that I will miss.” The Mac Pro had booted up, so I began my search.

  “Did I do that just now?” Ms. Washburn asked.

  “No.”

  Ms. Washburn sat down with a look on her face that I could not interpret. She pulled her cellular phone from her pocket and pushed buttons on it.

  While Ms. Washburn had indeed hit several relevant points in her analysis and come to a few conclusions I had reached myself when we were standing in the empty apartment of Cynthia Maholm, she had not completely focused on the solution I felt was most promising in our current difficulty.

  “I am attempting—” I began.

  Ms. Washburn put a finger to her lips. “Shhh.”

  “Ms. Washburn, I wanted to explain.”

  She repeated the gesture and the sound. I determined this was something I would not comprehend intuitively, and therefore could not currently analyze. So I returned to my Internet research.

  Ms. Washburn had been correct: No matter what Cynthia Maholm’s plan had been, whether she was involved in the death of Oliver Lewis or not, she had vacated the apartment that had been her home for at least six months and was now in need of at least temporary accommodations.

  It was possible that whatever activity had produced this condition might have involved a large sum of money, although there was no evidence of that yet. But people rarely created such hectic and disruptive conditions in their own lives without a motivation of either a romantic nature or a financial one, the latter being more likely in most cases.

  So if Cynthia was indeed now out of her home, with some extra funding or not, she needed a place to stay. And it was most likely that a woman her age, if she were not immediately involved with a man to follow her deceased husband, would rely on family for her housing.

  If it were me, which it would never be, I knew where I would go. So I was searching for some information about Cynthia Maholm’s parents.

  There was little on the most common search engines about Cynthia. But she had graduated from Teaneck High School, according to her Facebook profile, and that would indicate that her family had resided in that town for a while at least.

  A look into online telephone directories—there are some that require no payment, but most do; you have to know where to look—

  indicated there were three listings for people named Maholm in Teaneck at this moment. Marcus Maholm was, I discovered with some research, a ninety-three-year-old retired college professor, unlikely to be the father of a woman in her thirties. It was true that he could be Cynthia’s grandfather, but that was a secondary possibility to be explored only if a primary candidate—a possible parent—could not be located.

  I concentrated my research, then, on the other two listings under the name. It took very little time to eliminate the first, which was Maholm Auto Repair. Even if one of Cynthia’s parents was the proprietor, it was extremely unlikely that she would be living on the premises.

  The next, however, held some promise, although it was hardly a certainty. The listing was for L. Maholm on Edgemont Terrace. I glanced up at Ms. Washburn, who was still manipulating the screen on her cellular phone, wondered just for a moment about that, and then continued searching for an L. Maholm at the address in Teaneck.

  Certainly it would have been possible to simply call the number listed next to that name on the directory, but the telephone presents a plethora of uncomfortable possibilities for someone with Asperger’s Syndrome, at least in my case. Even considering my challenges with reading facial expressions, it is more difficult to read tone of voice without the help of a visual cue that might help determine meaning. Calling someone I had never met to ask if he or she was Cynthia Maholm’s parent was not a scenario I relished.

  Perhaps I could ask Ms. Washburn to make the call, but she seemed quite engrossed in the activity on her cellular phone. So I began searching a number of reliable websites that offer information about people given the amount of information one has at one’s disposal. There are some issues with privacy, but not many, as I was not attempting to discover L. Maholm’s buying habits or browsing history (although that certainly could be made possible—the Internet is not at all a secure instrument for those who have information they’d care not to divulge involuntarily).

  It took another twenty minutes, but I believed I was closing in on the mysterious L. Maholm. I had narrowed down the possibilities regarding the person’s first name to Landon Maholm, who it did not appear had lived in Teaneck but had resided at one time in neighboring Leonia. The other, more likely candidate was …

  “Louise Maholm,” Ms. Washburn sa
id, still staring at the screen of her cellular phone. “She is fifty-two years old, divorced, working at a branch of Valley National Bank as a bookkeeper. And she has a daughter whose name begins with a C.”

  I nodded at my associate. “Very good, Ms. Washburn. Is the daughter Cynthia Maholm?”

  Ms. Washburn contorted her face on the right side to indicate she couldn’t be sure. “She’s referred to as Cyndee, so I’m guessing it is, but you never know.”

  “Excellent work. How did you find her?”

  “Through a site called alums.com,” she answered. “They help people organize class reunions, and Louise attended her thirty-fifth late last year.”

  I checked the time on my Mac Pro; it was after five p.m. “It is probably too late to begin a fact-finding trip to Teaneck now,” I said.

  “You bet. I told Simon I’d be home by six, and I intend to be. After spending part of yesterday in jail and then having to answer questions about a dead body, I’m making sure I’m home on time for dinner.”

  It was all reasonable from Ms. Washburn’s point of view, but to me the question we were asked to answer was all I could consider. “Do you have time to make one telephone call?” I asked.

  Ms. Washburn’s eyes narrowed. “Louise Maholm?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I can do that,” she said. “But is it wise to warn her that we might suspect her daughter is staying with her, but we can’t come to find out until tomorrow?”

  It was a very logical thought process, but I found myself feeling frustrated and impatient. “I would not call that wise, no,” I said through unintentionally clenched teeth.

  “All right then, Samuel,” she said with a cheerful lilt in her voice. “Let’s drive you home so I can go home.”