Vivian fit the key in the lock, turned it, and pulled the drawer toward her.
It was empty.
She ran one hand along the bottom and sides. It was well and truly empty. The money was gone. The note was gone. It had disappeared from a locked drawer that Vivian had the only key to, as far as she knew. She blinked for a minute, eyes trained on the empty expanse of the desk drawer, thinking that if she stared long enough, the envelope might rematerialize in front of her. Then she entertained the idea that she’d imagined all of it. There had never been an envelope full of money, never a threatening note. But no, it had been there last night. She’d counted that money. She’d stared at that note until her vision blurred. What on earth was going on? The implication was plain. Someone else had known about the money and the note all along. And now that someone else knew that she knew.
Vivian felt along the insides of the drawer, along the outsides, and above the top edge, finally pulling the drawer out in frustration. There had to be something else. Something that explained this money and this note—why her father had locked them away so securely and why someone had taken them now. Something that would clear everything up in one fell swoop and allow her to have a happy Christmas without these niggling questions invading her thoughts.
There was no false bottom to the drawer, but as she ran her fingers along the back wall, they caught on a large piece of tape. She upended the drawer and pulled the heavy tape off with a loud ripping noise. There was nothing plastered to the wood underneath it, but something was stuck to the tape itself. She blinked. Another key. This one was slightly larger than the first and made of brass.
Vivian pried the key from the tape and held it up to the morning light. A number was stamped on one side—242. She sat motionless, staring at the key and hoping it would speak to her, that it would magically give her a clue to the secrets it had been keeping. But all Vivian heard was the ticking of the clock in the corner and the pounding of blood in her ears as her pulse began to race. One hidden key was odd. Two hidden keys was a conspiracy.
Vivian thought back to the night her father had died—February 12, 1931. She had turned seventeen the month before and, even by her own admission, had been a holy terror to her parents. But by February of that year she’d been attempting to make amends and to not be so brazen in her disrespect for her parent’s rules, especially her father’s. When she’d delivered his nightly Bloody Mary in the den that evening, he’d had the Chicago Daily Tribune unfolded on his lap and was staring at the front page. The headline at the top screamed CAPONE CITY HALL BOSS, pronouncing Al Capone the de facto leader of the city of Chicago. It had been more or less true at the time, although it wouldn’t be for much longer.
Arthur Witchell had been a bear of a man, standing over six feet tall and wide of shoulder. He’d been nearly bald, and the hair that remained had turned from mahogany to stone gray in the past few years. His eyes had been pale blue, and he’d worn half-glasses to read. They’d been perched on the very end of his nose. Vivian might have looked like her mother, but she shared her curious nature with her father. Her father, for better or worse, had indulged that curiosity.
He had been so absorbed in his thoughts as he gazed down at the newspaper that night that Vivian had had to hold the drink directly in front of his nose before he even noticed that she was standing there.
His head had jerked up, and he’d blinked, startled. “Oh, Vivian.” His eyes landed on the glass she held. “Mrs. Graves too busy with dinner?” He took the glass from her and set it on the side table, folding the newspaper and setting it down as well.
Vivian shrugged. “I asked if I could bring you your drink tonight.”
“Well, this is a nice surprise. May I inquire as to why?”
Viv sat on the ottoman at his feet and clasped her hands between her knees.
“No reason,” she said. Her stomach flipped at the lie. The truth was that she was trying to get back into her father’s good graces. There was a Valentine’s dance coming up at school, and she desperately wanted to go. The way things stood between them now, she would have to wait until hell froze over to leave the house for anything beyond school. It was her own fault though, and she knew that. She’d tested her father’s patience, and even though Arthur Witchell doted on his only daughter, his patience had its limits.
She remembered the look of white-hot fury on his face when he’d caught her sneaking back into her own bedroom the night after the Green Mill. She’d reeked of liquor and tobacco, and he’d been so angry that it had frightened her. That had been just before Christmas, and she’d been careful during the six weeks since. She hadn’t snuck out, hadn’t smoked one cigarette, but the fragile trust she’d built with her father had been broken that night. Perhaps irrevocably.
He looked terrible—drawn, pale, thinner—and if she wasn’t mistaken, she’d smelled alcohol already on his breath, although he normally only had one drink in the evening.
“Working on a big case?” she asked. He filled her in on big cases from time to time. But they hadn’t talked much in the past few months. Things were strained between them, but Vivian thought maybe he’d cooled down sufficiently for her to start mending fences. Not only to get permission to go to the dance, but also because she missed talking with him. He used to share his work with her, but now she didn’t know what he was working on. He glanced over at the paper, paused as if he was considering whether to say something, and then nodded.
“Yes, but it’s coming to a close, I think.”
“Good. You need to take care of yourself, you know.”
He smiled, his eyes flicking over to the fireplace. “Oh, sweetheart, you know I’ve never been much for that.”
“I think you should take a nice long rest—go somewhere tropical. Put your feet up in the sun. And take me with you.” Vivian grinned, and they both glanced toward the frosted-over window, the February wind howling against the pane.
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” he’d said. But there hadn’t been much enthusiasm behind his words. He put his palm on his chest and winced.
“Maybe you shouldn’t drink that. It’ll exasperate your indigestion,” Vivian said.
Her father glanced down at the drink.
“Ah, it’s never stopped me before. Constitution of an ox.”
They’d smiled at each other just as the telephone trilled in the hall. Vivian turned, her heart hammering. She’d been expecting a call from a boy she liked. There was always a boy in those days. But her father had clasped her hand, pulling her attention back to him.
“Everything I do is for your mother, your brother, and you. You know that, don’t you?”
She’d smiled and squeezed his hand, glancing toward the front hall again, distracted by the boy at the other end of that telephone.
“Of course, Father.”
She thought he was being sentimental. Except that her father was rarely sentimental. She wished she’d realized it then. Maybe she could have changed things somehow if he’d stayed. Maybe she could have saved him. But then Mrs. Graves called to tell Vivian the telephone was for her, and she’d run off and left him.
Vernon Banks, her crush du jour at Waller High, had wanted to give her an early Valentine’s Day present, and she’d had a few minutes to sneak out before dinner. Because of that, Vivian hadn’t been there when her father had the heart attack, and the boy she’d been so keen on hadn’t even stuck around long enough to see his chintzy token of affection turn her finger green.
Vivian heard the telltale creak of the tricky floorboard in the hall and broke from her reverie. She shut the drawer, locked it again, and slipped the silver key into her pocket, clasping the other key in her left hand. She was already leaning forward, resting her chin on one hand and staring off into space, when Mrs. Graves stuck her gray head through the open doorway.
“Oh, Viv,” the older woman said, placing one palm ove
r her heart. “I thought I heard someone up here. You’re up and about early today.”
Vivian glanced at her, sighed, and leaned back in the heavy leather desk chair, which rolled backward under her weight. The housekeeper walked across the room to stand at the window. Mrs. Graves was somewhere in her seventies. Vivian suddenly felt a twinge of guilt. She should know exactly how old Mrs. Graves was. She was a member of the family, and she and her husband had been around for Vivian’s entire life. Her husband, Herbert, had been something of her father’s man Friday—chauffeur, valet, companion, and confidante. Mrs. Graves was small, wiry, but tough as nails. She kept a baseball bat under her bed for protection, and Vivian had no doubt that if it ever came to that, she would use it. Mrs. Graves’s thinning gray hair sprang out from her head, and in the backlight from the window, Vivian thought the housekeeper rather resembled a dandelion gone to seed.
“I wanted to sit in here for a few minutes. You know, this is where I feel Father the most.” Vivian reached over and opened the small wooden cigar box on the corner of the desk. The heady scent of Cuban tobacco wafted toward her, so pungent even after all this time. Tears sprang to her eyes. That smell was her father. It was almost as if he were standing right beside her. She touched the gold band around one cigar with the tips of her fingers: Epoca, the label said. An expensive brand, no doubt.
“We all miss him,” Mrs. Graves said, smiling sadly.
Vivian looked toward the window to give herself a few seconds to compose herself. A feeble pink glow was starting to come into the sky, the dark study lightening bit by bit. “I can’t believe this is the eighth Christmas without him. The eighth Christmas without his horrid rendition of ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.’”
Mrs. Graves smiled at the joke. Arthur Witchell had had a terrible singing voice.
He hadn’t lived to see Vivian’s success as a radio actress. When he died, the idea of being an actress hadn’t been even a glimmer in her eye, a thought in her head. She’d been a boy-crazy teenager out to have a good time—and out to do anything her mother would disapprove of. She was still doing that though, wasn’t she? Vivian turned to smile at Mrs. Graves again, and then she noticed the older woman’s tears.
“Oh God, I’m sorry. I’m being thoughtless. This is a rough time of year for you too, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Graves had lost her husband a month after Vivian’s father. His car, the Witchell family car, had hit a patch of ice on Ogden Avenue early one March morning and skidded into a lamppost, killing him instantly and maiming her father’s intern, Martin Gilfoy, who’d been in the back seat. It had been a terrible blow for everyone already reeling from Mr. Witchell’s death.
Mr. Graves had been like a member of the family. So had Martin, come to think of it, and now they hadn’t seen him in years. He’d taken such a long time to convalesce, and then he’d just drifted out of their lives. The way people did when the person holding them together was suddenly gone. Arthur Witchell had held so much together, and so much had changed in the blink of an eye when he’d died.
“Christmas is hard, but I think it’s worse in the fall. That’s when your father and Herbert used to go up to the cabin on Cranberry Lake for their annual duck-hunting trip. I miss them both then for some reason.” Mrs. Graves wiped the tears from her lined face.
“That’s right,” Vivian said. She’d forgotten all about her father’s fondness for hunting. And forgotten what good friends her father had been with Mr. Graves, so good that they’d gone on trips together and stayed at the family cabin in Wisconsin every year. Mr. Graves had spent more time at that cabin than Vivian ever had. She wasn’t a cabin sort of girl.
“They never did come back with much of anything,” Mrs. Graves said with a wistful smile. “But I don’t think the trip was really about hunting—except, perhaps, hunting for whiskey and a poker game.”
Vivian smiled. “I’m glad my father had a friend like your husband.”
Mrs. Graves pursed her lips together and nodded. She looked off toward the frosted window. She was silent for a moment, and the next words out of her mouth seemed to be meant only for herself.
“It was just so sudden, you know. I hadn’t expected it to happen that way.”
Vivian waited for Mrs. Graves to continue.
“I’m sorry?”
Mrs. Graves remained staring out the window. Vivian wasn’t sure the housekeeper had heard her question, but then she spoke again without turning.
“Your father. Herbert. All of it. So sudden. So…” She grappled for a moment with the word before she found it. “Unnecessary.”
Vivian narrowed her eyes at the housekeeper, trying to decipher her cryptic remarks. She hadn’t expected it to happen that way? And all of what? Was she saying that her father’s and Herbert Graves’s deaths were somehow connected? Certainly almost all death that hadn’t come from prolonged sickness could be considered sudden. But unnecessary was an odd choice of words. When was the death of a loved one ever necessary? Vivian opened her mouth but shut it again as she searched for an appropriate response. The older woman was noticeably agitated. She clutched the sides of her apron and stared, unblinking, out the window at the snowy back lawn and the coach house beyond.
“Gone before their time,” Vivian said. She felt stupid as soon as she said it, but nothing else remotely soothing came to mind. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Mrs. Graves about the money, but surely she would have said something by now if she’d known. If anyone knew the inner workings of this household, it was her.
Mrs. Graves turned her head and looked at Vivian for a long moment, her eyes searching Vivian’s face. Then she blinked, and the fog that had come over her features cleared. “Yes,” she said. She shook her head. “I have to see to the buffet.” Her hands came together in front of her ample bosom as if in prayer. “Come down when you’re ready. I’ve made those cinnamon scones that you love.”
Vivian’s stomach rumbled, but she had some thinking to do. “I’ll be down in a minute,” she said, and waited until she heard Mrs. Graves return to the first floor before relaxing her fingers to expose the brass key once again. She’d been clutching it so hard that it had left a perfect red imprint in her palm.
If Vivian had any lingering doubts over whether the envelope of cash and note were suspicious, their disappearance and the discovery of this key taped to the back of the drawer dispelled them. Envelopes of money didn’t just vanish from locked drawers. And taping keys to the back of those locked drawers was not normal behavior. Her father had had something to hide, and Vivian wasn’t the only one who knew it. She sat at his desk for another few minutes, soaking up his presence but feeling uneasy. She put the picture frame back together and set it on its perch atop the filing cabinet. She slipped the brass key into her pocket, along with the silver drawer key, and went down to breakfast, conspiracy theories beginning to swirl in her head.
• • •
Vivian’s fingertips brushed the aged tinsel on the edge of Saint Nicholas’s cap. The Sistine Chapel Choir piped softly from the Vatican from the floor-model Philco radio against the far wall.
Someone had taken the money. That meant one of two things had happened: someone had known the money was there all along and took it when they found out she knew, or someone found out about the money because of her. That first option could be any number of people. The second option left only the person who had come upon her just after she’d opened the drawer—Everett. She glanced over her shoulder at him. He sat on the sofa on the side nearest the fireplace, looking through a book of Greek myths that Gloria had given him.
Then her mind returned to the earlier conversation with the housekeeper. Mrs. Graves said she hadn’t expected it to happen that way. If she had indeed been referring to Vivian’s father’s death, what way had she been expecting? And then there was that note threatening that her father would lose everything. All Vivian could think about was how he
r father had lost everything after all. He’d died so suddenly. Unexpectedly. Unnecessarily, Mrs. Graves had said. Vivian turned back to Everett, suddenly unable to bear the thoughts swirling in her head.
“You helped Father at his office, right?”
Everett looked up from his book and studied her a few seconds before answering. “Well, that depends what you mean by helped… I saw a lot of the insides of his filing cabinets. I was a kid—barely out of short pants. I wasn’t old enough then to do much but make a nuisance of myself. Why do you ask?”
She touched the brass key through the fabric of her pocket. Could it be the key to a filing cabinet? Then she sighed. She doubted Everett knew anything. He’d been twelve when Father had passed—hardly the age at which a father would confide in his son about serious things. Still, Everett had been around Arthur Witchell’s law office more than Vivian had and might have seen something—even if he didn’t understand what it had meant at the time. After all, their father had been grooming Everett to follow in his footsteps. He was only an undergraduate at Northwestern, but he was already focused on law school. It had been his only dream since their father’s death.
“I’ve been thinking about him today…and I wondered how much you’d seen of his practice. I never got to see that part of his life.”
“I don’t think I can tell you much except that I alphabetized until my eyes crossed.”
Vivian walked over to the fireplace and picked up the Christmas card from Uncle Freddy.
“Do you think there was a part of his life, his work, that we didn’t know about?”
Homicide for the Holidays Page 4