Homicide for the Holidays

by Cheryl Honigford

  “She won’t be so gauche as to ask herself, but Mother is dying to know if there’s a Mrs. Gilfoy on the horizon.”

  “Why? Is she interested in the position?”

  Vivian laughed.

  “I could do far worse than your mother, you know. Though I’d say she has her hands full at the moment.”

  Vivian snorted. “You’re right not to throw your hat into that ring. Is there a lucky lady in the picture?”

  He shook his head. “No one in particular.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  Martin’s eyes shifted to her. “And why’s that?”

  “Don’t family men do better at the polls?”

  “Ah, that’s true. But my wifelessness is not for lack of trying, you see. I haven’t found the right woman yet.”

  “Perhaps your standards are too high.”

  “I don’t think so.” He held out one hand, ticking off the qualities as he named them on his fingers. “She’d have to be charming, smart, beautiful, witty, quick with a joke, light on her feet…”

  “I’m afraid you’ve run out of fingers.”

  “Then let me continue on the other hand. Did I mention witty?”

  “And you think you’ll find all of that in one woman?”

  “I know she exists somewhere out there.” He nodded solemnly and locked eyes with her. “Maybe closer than I thought. But in my head, I kept thinking of her as perpetually a child of sixteen—when that is clearly no longer the case.”

  Vivian swallowed and glanced away. She was amused to find that her heart beat a little quicker under his gaze. There’d always been a spark inside her for Martin Gilfoy, and she knew if she allowed herself to fan the flames a little, it would turn into a full-out bonfire.

  “Say, what are you doing for New Year’s?” he asked.

  Charlie’s face automatically appeared in her mind. They’d left things unsettled. She had no doubt she would see him again. She had to. Despite what he’d said, what was between them wasn’t over.

  “There’s this party at the mayor’s house, you see…sure to be a bore. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to… I’m afraid I can’t offer you much in the way of dancing…” Martin motioned to his lame leg.

  “Only the mayor? Call me when you’ve got an invitation to the White House.” She smiled at him. She did wish she could say yes. “The truth is that I’d love to, but I can’t. I’m in rehearsals all week for a special production on New Year’s Day, and we have dress rehearsal all day and probably all night on Saturday. I can’t guarantee I’ll make it out before midnight.” Not entirely true, she thought. If Charlie had been the one asking, she’d have found some way to go.

  “I see,” Martin said, returning her smile and exposing that irresistible dimple in his right cheek. “After this production is over then?”

  “Maybe,” she answered. She saw no reason to turn him down flat. Best to keep her options open. She could do far worse than Martin Gilfoy, even if he was precisely who her mother wanted for her.

  She turned toward the fireplace, the logs crackling and popping. They watched the flames dance for a few moments in companionable silence.

  “Why on earth did you stay away from us so long?” she asked finally.

  “Did you miss me?”

  Vivian glanced at him. “We all missed you,” she answered after a pause.

  His face clouded, and his eyes returned to the fire. “Mrs. Graves didn’t.”

  So her anger had been directed at Martin in that scene Vivian had interrupted earlier. She suspected that Martin knew she had overheard part of the conversation, although she wasn’t willing to admit it. Martin cleared his throat.

  “It was all so sudden…everything that happened. I had a long period of recuperation after the accident, and then, well, it was awkward. Arthur was gone, and I didn’t want it to seem like I was ingratiating myself.”

  “Never. You were part of the family. You still are.”

  Martin’s smile faded as his eyes swept over the room.

  “It’s…odd…to be here after so long. And it’s uncomfortable knowing that Mrs. Graves still blames me for what happened.”

  “Blames you? But it wasn’t your fault,” Vivian said.

  Martin shrugged and gazed into the fire. “I’m here, and her husband isn’t.”

  Vivian sighed. “What happened was an accident, Martin. We all know that.” She reached out and placed a hand on his arm. He placed his own hand over hers and squeezed.

  “How is your leg?” she asked.

  Martin shrugged, kicked his right leg stiffly out in front of him, and smacked it with his palm.

  “It’s useable most days. Stiff as a board, others. The doctors say it was a miracle I was able to walk again. I have nightmares about it sometimes still. That car cutting it too close on the curve, pushing us onto that patch of ice, seeing that lamppost come closer and closer. Knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it.” He shivered.

  Vivian swallowed, the hairs on her arms standing on end. “The car was forced off the road? I didn’t know that.”

  Martin shrugged. “I don’t think it was on purpose. Ogden was a solid sheet of ice that night. But in my dreams, it all seems so ominous…and I wake with this terrible feeling of dread.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’m sorry for turning this wonderful evening so morbid. I’m afraid I need to say good night. I have court early tomorrow morning.”

  “It’s nice to see you again, Martin.” She pushed herself up on tiptoes and brushed his cheek with her lips. “Try not to be such a stranger, would you?”

  He looked down at her and winked.

  “You couldn’t keep me away now if you tried.”

  Chapter Nine

  Vivian couldn’t sleep. She lay awake in her bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the evening. Martin. Mrs. Graves. Freddy. Gloria. So much unexpected tension. And then there was Charlie hovering in the back of her mind. Seeing him again had sparked the ember within her. She had to see him again, but how? Her thoughts swirled and tangled. No, sleep was impossible. So she dressed and went back to the front house.

  The money and note may be gone, but maybe there was something in her father’s study that might help her make sense of things. She let herself in the kitchen door and started up the back stairs, then stopped. She heard a man’s voice. She stood still, held her breath, listened. It had to be coming from the radio in the den—the muffled voice of a male announcer. She retreated down the stairs and tiptoed down the hall to the den doorway.

  Someone was sitting in Father’s chair in front of the radio. With the light from the streetlamp hitting him at just the right angle, Vivian thought for a split second that it was her father. Her heart jigged in her chest. She stepped backward and bumped into the hall table, jostling the vase that sat on top of it. The man in the chair turned. It wasn’t her father, she saw. It was Oskar.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

  “No, no, come in,” he said with a noticeable crack in his own voice. He had his head cocked toward the speaker, and his face was a mask of unguarded concern.

  “Has something happened?” Vivian asked, her stomach sinking. She eyed the radio with trepidation. A lot of bad news seemed to be coming out of it these days.

  Oskar stared at her for a moment before snapping out of his reverie. “Oh no, nothing specific,” he said. “That whole situation in Europe has me so worried.” He smiled feebly at her as he passed a handkerchief over his mouth.

  “Yes,” she answered. “It has us all worried. But I can imagine what it’s like for you.”

  Oskar glanced up at her, eyes narrowed. “Can you?” he asked.

  “Well, yes, you being from…the area… I can imagine…�
�� Everything coming to her mind was trite and inadequate. She couldn’t imagine what it was like for him, and she had no idea why she’d said it.

  Oskar’s expression softened. “I apologize,” he said. “It seems I always expect the worst of people.”

  Vivian stared him, confused.

  “You don’t know then?” he asked.

  “Know what?”

  “Your mother hasn’t told you.” He looked at her expectantly. When she shook her head, confused, he added. “I’m Jewish, Vivian.”

  Vivian blinked. Her mother hadn’t said a word. In fact, she’d told Vivian virtually nothing about Oskar. Perhaps now she understood why. “No,” she managed to say. “She hasn’t mentioned it.”

  “Good,” he answered. “I’m not ashamed of it, of course. But it’s nobody’s business. Especially not these days.”

  They sat in silence for a minute, listening to the tinny sounds of the news reporter mumbling through the speakers.

  “You have family over there,” she said.

  He nodded. “Two sisters and their families near Munich. I’ve been begging them for years to leave, but they insist that things can’t get any worse. But they are. They’re getting worse every day.” He cocked his head toward the speaker. “Now I hear they’re deporting all Polish Jews from Germany, and Poland won’t take them. All those people in limbo, lives in chaos. Where do they go? They’re running out of time.”

  They. Not merely Oskar’s immediate family, but all Jews in Europe. Vivian knew that’s what he meant, but she couldn’t reconcile the idea in her head. It was too large, too terrible. Running out of time—out of time before what? Vivian shook her head.

  “My family has been trying to leave since they destroyed the synagogues about six weeks ago, but they haven’t managed to secure the right papers yet.”

  “But I thought Chamberlain made peace with Hitler,” Vivian said. Doubt clouded her voice. She suddenly felt so ill-informed. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the news lately. She never had—unless it involved her.

  “Peace.” Oskar snorted and then sat upright and snapped the radio off with a decisive flick of the wrist. He turned to her, a kind smile on his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I get carried away.”

  “It’s all right,” she answered. She swallowed and tapped her fingers against her hip, desperate to change the subject. “You know, it’s nice to see a man in Father’s chair.”

  Oskar glanced up at her, the light glinting off his spectacles. He smiled slightly, opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated and closed it again.

  Vivian started backing toward the door. She felt bumbling, uncomfortable, incapable of saying the right thing, or anything close to the right thing. Was there a right thing? She’d already turned to leave when he finally spoke up.

  “Your father was a good man,” he said, his voice so low she almost hadn’t heard him.

  Vivian turned back to face him. “You knew him?”

  He nodded. “He was my attorney.”

  “Your attorney?” Her father had been Oskar’s attorney? Vivian’s heart began to race. If she’d learned anything in her time investigating with Charlie, it was that little in life, in her life anyway, was mere coincidence.

  “He did some immigration paperwork for me,” he said. “It was long ago and far away.” He said with a wistful smile. “They haven’t kicked me out of the country yet, so he knew what he was about.”

  Vivian laughed, and then she bit her lip. She wanted to ask if Mother knew that Oskar had known her father, but she didn’t. Of course she had to know.

  “Then you’d met Uncle Freddy before,” Vivian said, the idea dawning on her. The two men hadn’t behaved as if they’d known anything about each other before this evening, but how could they not have if Oskar had been a client of her father’s? That might explain the obvious animosity between them—animosity on Freddy’s part, anyway. Perhaps his foul mood wasn’t only freshly stirred jealousy over her mother.

  Oskar shook his head. “In passing, perhaps. I dealt strictly with your father.” His stern expression softened. “I wish he were here to help now. He was a good man.”

  “He was,” Vivian said, surprised to find a lump in her throat yet again. After she’d made her excuses and was climbing the back stairs to her father’s study, she realized that perhaps by stressing that her father was a good man, Oskar was also somehow implying that Freddy was not. But how might Oskar know such a thing? Maybe all of this was just bad blood over her mother. Her mother. Who would’ve guessed?

  • • •

  Vivian had poked silently around the dim study, looking for anything that might help her understand her father and his reasons for a locked drawer of cash. She found nothing, of course. She knew she was kidding herself. What could she find that would possibly explain any of it after eight years? She slumped into the chair at his desk, staring into the darkness.

  After a few moments, she found herself putting the little silver key into the lock as if her hands were working independently of her mind. She watched, fascinated, as her fingers pulled the drawer open. Empty, of course. She was almost relieved. She started to slide it closed again, and then something caught her eye. A smudge? No, not a smudge. And the drawer was not entirely empty.

  Vivian leaned down. It was difficult to see in the ambient light from the streetlamp outside. But scrawled in pencil across the bottom of the empty drawer in a hand Vivian didn’t recognize was Stop before you hurt everyone you love.

  Vivian sucked in her breath. This message hadn’t been there the day before when she upended the drawer and searched every inch of it. She was sure of it. It was delivered in the same tone as the note in the envelope of money, but this message hadn’t been meant for her father. No, someone had written that message especially for her, and they’d written it today. Her pulse pounded in her ears. But it wasn’t precisely fear she felt. It was more like excitement. Because that niggling feeling in her gut hadn’t been wrong after all. She was on to something.

  Chapter Ten

  Charlie’s office was on the second floor of a three-story walk-up on the south side of the Loop. The facade of the brick building had once been a creamy yellow color, but the soot of forty-odd years of city life had turned it the color of tobacco-stained fingers. Vivian stood looking at it from the bus stop across the street. She hadn’t called to schedule an appointment, and she was surprised to find herself having to work up the nerve to approach. The neighborhood wasn’t downtrodden exactly, but it was shabby, the buildings leaning a bit, crumbling around the edges in disrepair.

  This wasn’t the office Peggy Hart had lured Charlie to with the promise of reconciliation with his father, their father, two months before. There, Peggy had knocked Charlie out and opened the gas lines, intending for him to suffocate and be out of her life forever. Vivian had been to that office once after she’d tried to call him without success. She’d found it empty. He’d moved without telling her where. But, as it turned out, he hadn’t moved far—one block over and one block down. If she’d only known that at the time, she thought. Vivian rubbed her arms, chilled through.

  She gathered her nerve and crossed the street. Gray-brown snow clogged the gutter, and she picked her way through the slush that had yet to be cleared from the street. Then she hopped up the wide stone steps to the front door. A panel by the door listed Charlie’s name and that of one other, Marshall Lisky, bookkeeping. They shared the second floor. The other four slots were either blank or crossed out with the thick, black strokes. There was no buzzer, so Vivian walked up the flight of stairs to the second-floor landing.

  His name was stenciled on the frosted glass of the door: Charles Haverman Jr.—Private Inquiries. She didn’t knock, but instead turned the knob with trepidation. Her guts churned, because she had to see Charlie again in the flesh and she had to ask for his help.

  A young woman sat
at the desk in the almost-empty room, wearing a wool coat around her shoulders like Red Riding Hood. She looked up from her True Romances magazine, marking her spot on the page with a manicured forefinger. “Can I help you?” she asked. She tossed her luscious brown hair over her shoulder as she inspected Vivian.

  “Is Mr. Haverman in?”

  The woman glanced toward the closed door to her right. “Mr. Haverman is in conference and not to be disturbed. I can take a message for you, if you like.”

  Vivian glanced toward the door. She didn’t hear any voices. She didn’t hear anything except the tapping of the secretary’s fingernail on the open magazine. She looked dubiously back at the secretary.

  “Could you perhaps tell him who’s calling?”

  The secretary scowled at her, a thick vertical crease appearing between her brows.

  “And just who is calling?” she asked, her voice acerbic. She slid a piece of notepaper underneath her pencil without dropping eye contact with Vivian.

  “Vivian Witchell. That’s W-I-”

  The interior door swung open, and Charlie stepped into the small reception area. He was wearing his overcoat, but not his hat. Had she caught him on the way out? He glanced at Vivian, shooting her a slight smile, before turning to the receptionist. “It’s okay, Maxine. Miss Witchell is an old friend.”

  Old friend, Vivian thought, narrowing her eyes at the detective. Old indeed.

  He turned sideways, sweeping one arm toward the open door and ushering Vivian into his inner sanctum. She shot him a narrow look, but then found herself returning his smile. Damn it anyway, she found it impossible not to smile at the man.

  She took off her winter coat and slung it across the coat-tree in the corner before realizing how cold it was in the room. Her eyes fell on the radiator under the window. It clanked and clunked but seemed to be producing precious little heat. She’d assumed she’d caught Charlie on the way out the door, but apparently he’d been wearing his winter coat in an effort not to freeze. The receptionist had been wearing her coat as well, and it hadn’t been a fashion statement. Charlie followed Vivian’s gaze to the radiator.