Up close, the bush was beautiful, nothing like the ones I’d seen my mother struggling with.
“They can get twelve feet high and just as wide if you don’t trim them.”
“No kidding.”
She caressed one of the branches. “They’re like my children.”
“Well, it shows. Your landscaping is beautiful. You do all this yourself?”
She nodded.
“Someday, when I have a house of my own, can I come to you for advice?”
Her expression melted into a soft smile. “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee, Miss Godfrey?”
I had a feeling someone who cared so well for a winterberry bush couldn’t be all bad.
FOUR
Rumors
“A cup of coffee would hit the spot, Mrs...”
“Lawless. But please call me Minnie. And may I call you Ginger?”
“Yes, of course.”
I followed her up the front steps and into the foyer. It wasn’t often that a real-life situation in investigative work turned into a textbook example of how to do it right. I was proud of myself—this stranger had just invited me into her home. But then it occurred to me that all I’d offered her were lies, and that didn’t seem right. They hadn’t covered that in class.
Minnie pointed to the living room. “Please make yourself comfortable. I’ll put a pot of coffee on for us.”
While she was in the kitchen, I took in as much as I could—even things that didn’t seem important right then could have meaning later on. I made notes on a small pad of paper I kept in my purse.
It was eerily quiet in the living room—the faint sounds of Minnie fussing around the kitchen were all I heard. I couldn’t even hear a car go by, and the street couldn’t have been more than thirty feet from the house. With the windows closed, it was possible no one would have heard a commotion going on in there, like the day Anna had been murdered.
A fireplace flanked by built-in bookcases that held more knickknacks, photographs, and houseplants than books took up most of one wall. Leaded-glass doors beneath the shelves revealed cabinets filled with cardboard boxes.
I took a seat at one end of the long upholstered sofa in front of the three windows facing the street. On the other side of the room were two cushioned side chairs separated by a large round two-tiered end table. The soft blue and brown tones in the furniture’s fabric made the room warm and inviting.
The throw rug in the middle of the room looked familiar to me, but the pattern was common—blue borders, maroon and blue flowers, beige background—so I figured I had probably seen similar ones before. I must have stared at it too long—it made me a little uneasy.
My eyes were drawn to the far wall where there hung a handmade tapestry depicting a long, narrow cobblestone walk meandering through a lush summer garden. A black cat sat on the walk three quarters of the way into the garden, seemingly taking pleasure in the essence of the flowers. There was a feeling about the room that reminded me of our old living room.
“You have a lovely home, Minnie,” I practically shouted so she could hear me in the kitchen.
A minute later, she reentered the living room, and as she neared me the unmistakable scent of Cashmere Bouquet talcum powder tugged me back to my childhood when my mother used to hug me close to her chest and say, “I’m so glad you’re mine.” I never thought anything about it then, but now I wondered what she had meant by that.
“This is just how I pictured this house inside…warm and cozy. Did you raise a family here?”
She gave me a blank stare.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“So, Ginger, are you from around here?”
“I live near Six Corners, not too far from here.”
“And what brings you to this neighborhood?”
I was prepared for that question but didn’t feel good about telling yet another lie.
“I went to school with a girl who now lives in Minneapolis but was in town visiting her cousin who lives just a few blocks from here. We had a nice visit.”
“Oh, really? What’s her name?”
“My friend? Susan Grady.”
“No, I meant her cousin.”
“Well, her first name is Charlotte, but I don’t think I ever heard her last name. Nice girl.” I took a sip of coffee, which I never did like. I didn’t much like myself just then either.
“Don’t know anyone named Charlotte in this neighborhood.”
“Well, maybe she hasn’t lived here that long. I didn’t ask.”
“A few blocks in which direction?”
“Um, let’s see.” I twisted the upper half of my body around to glance out the window and buy some time. “I seem to be a little turned around. I think it’s that direction,” I told her, pointing across the street. “But I’m not sure now.” With my luck, she knew who lived in every house within a two-mile radius.
“No, it can’t be there, unless of course, they just moved in, and then it could be the old Jefferson house. I heard there are new owners, but they’re older, maybe in their seventies.”
“I didn’t see anyone else in the house, but maybe they were out. In fact, I’m sure of it. Charlotte was pretty young to own that house all by herself.”
“Hmmm.”
Minnie’s facial expression told me she may have been thinking about how she could find out more about who bought the Jefferson house. All I could think of right then was a line from some poem I had to read in school: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave...”
“Have you lived here long, Minnie?”
“I bought this house in 1943. May 29. The day Rosie the Riveter was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.” She beamed. “I know what events happened on important days of my life. Like on the day I was born, right at the beginning of World War I, Germany declared war on France that day.”
She was quite a character.
“That winterberry bush,” she said. “It looked like it was about to take its last breath when I bought this place. If I hadn’t come along, it would have died for sure.”
“You must have a way with plants.”
She appeared to be silently reminiscing, so I gave her several seconds to come back to the conversation.
“I bought this house after I lost my daughter and husband.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I couldn’t bear to keep living in the house we had when we got married, so I sold it and bought this one. I was so lonely, and that’s what attracted me to this place. I thought maybe the boarders would be company for me.”
“Boarders?”
“When I bought it, there were three boarders upstairs. Four rooms, three boarders. But not for long. One by one, they left, and I didn’t bother replacing them. Turns out they weren’t company at all—just a bunch of weirdoes. One of them even died up there.”
It was hard to think with my heart racing so fast. “I just assumed this was a single-family home. It looks like—”
“This house was originally built as a single-family home, but someone who lived here before me must have turned the upstairs into a boardinghouse. That’s why there are outside stairs in the back. They were added so the boarders would have a separate entrance.”
The story was getting more interesting by the minute.
“If it was during the war, maybe the owner needed the money,” I added.
“I suppose. I never met her, the owner that is. I didn’t find out until after I was settled in here that she was actually murdered in this house—right here in this room.”
So Anna actually owned this house. I hadn’t considered that.
“No kidding. What happened?”
“I don’t know for sure.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “But I do know there was some hanky-panky going on between her and one of the boarders.”
“Really? What kind?”
“Well...there were rumors.”
It was all I could do to contain the excitement mounting in my ches
t.
“Rumors?”
“They were having an affair,” she whispered.
“How scandalous. It would make for a good book though. I’ll have to keep that in mind.”
“Are you a writer then?”
“Yes. Well, I would like to be one. So far, all I’ve done is collect ideas. So do tell, what were the rumors?”
“I shouldn’t say. They were just rumors, and—”
A ringing phone interrupted her. Minnie walked across the room to answer it. The conversation was brief.
“Ginger, dear, I completely forgot about my hair appointment. They’re going to hold it for me, so I have to run.”
“Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
“I was going to call a taxi.”
“Oh, don’t do that. I’ll give you a ride.”
“Well, okay. It would be faster that way.”
Minnie threw on a coat, and we walked to my car.
“Where are we going?” I asked her.
“Near your house—Six Corners.”
Realizing there was now not much more time to get information from her, I got right to it. “So, Minnie, tell me more about the juicy rumors you heard about the people who used to live in your house. I love gossip.”
“Well, I don’t really know exactly what went on there before I moved in, but don’t you think it strange that— Oh, look, there’s Mrs. Jedlecker! That old battle-ax. She stole my Sunday paper from me once, right off my sidewalk! I like her granddaughter though. Reminds me of...” Her voice trailed off.
“Of who, Minnie?”
“Muriel.”
“Muriel?”
“My little girl.”
No matter how important it was to maintain my investigator role, I just couldn’t. The sadness in her voice was heartbreaking. “How old was she?”
“Six.” She paused. “Just six years old. Her first day of school. September 9, 1942. The war was in full swing by then. Everyone was in it—it may have been easier to list the countries that weren’t in it. September 9...” The sound of her voice appeared to be coming from a different place. “Clarence drove her to school that day. He had the radio on, and when the newscaster said Japan had just dropped a bomb on us—not in Hawaii like Pearl Harbor, but in Oregon—he lost control of the car and ran into a tree.”
“How awful.”
“By the time I got to the hospital, Muriel was gone, and Clarence was hanging on by a thread. He told me what happened. I didn’t tell him about Muriel, but I’m sure he found out soon enough...when he passed over to the other side.”
I was trying not to tear up, but it was hard not to. I didn’t know what to say, so I kept silent for the next couple of blocks. The rumors didn’t seem all that important then.
Minnie broke the silence. “Don’t you think it strange that the woman didn’t close off the inside stairway to the second floor when she took in boarders? After all, those stairs were in her bedroom. There it is, dear. On the right. See the awning?”
We’re there already?
I pulled over, and before I’d come to a complete stop, Minnie had the door open. “Thank you for the lift, Ginger! Do keep in touch, dear!”
It was all I could do to collect myself and drive away—first, the unexpected news about the house having had boarders; then, Minnie on the verge of telling me something provocative about Anna, followed by the tragic story of how she’d lost her husband and daughter. I wasn’t sure which of these bombshells was causing my stomach to swirl like it was.
It was four o’clock, and I was just minutes from home. I decided to forego stopping in at the office before climbing up to my apartment. I needed to sort things out without distractions.
I parked the car behind my building and walked through the alley to the front. I was almost past our office windows when I heard a rap on the glass and saw Elmer waving me in. He met me at the door.
“You have a visitor.”
Louise Fincutter, the mother of the missing teen, started talking before I’d even sat down. “I got a call from one of Erma’s friends who said she’d heard from her. Apparently, she left the house on the South Side where her two half-brothers live and hopped on a bus to Detroit looking for her father.”
“How long ago was this?”
“The call? This morning.”
“Do you know how long ago she got on the bus?”
“I asked that question too, but her friend didn’t think to ask her that.”
“What else did Erma tell her?”
“Just that one of her half-brothers gave her some money to look for their father and told her if she found him to let them know.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“The last I heard he was in jail, but that was some years ago. I’m sure he’s out by now.”
“Well, I can check that out. In jail in Detroit?”
“I can only assume that because that’s where he’s from and where he went after we parted ways. I know it’s not here in Chicago, because I have a sister who works at the County Clerk’s Office, and she checked that out for me. Flora. You interviewed her when you first took my case.”
“Yes, I remember her. The County Clerk’s Office, you say?”
“Yes. She’s been there for years.”
“It would be nice to have an inside contact there. Sometimes—”
“Say no more. I’ll talk to her.”
Louise gave me more information about her ex-husband before leaving.
I went upstairs with visions of a long bath and a glass or two of Mad Dog, the only wine I could afford. Weighing heavily on my mind was how I was going to manage to continue the search for Erma Fincutter if she was in Detroit looking for her ex-con father.
FIVE
That Was No Poker Game
I wasn’t in my office five minutes, hadn’t even gotten my coat off, when the phone rang. I couldn’t imagine who would be calling before eight o’clock. The sun was barely up.
The man introduced himself as Jeff Porter. He suspected his daughter’s husband was “shady” and wanted a background check on him. He said he’d bring the retainer check over shortly. He sounded anxious. I named this case Shady Lane.
Since I’d started the business four months earlier, my workload had consisted of mostly skip traces, public record searches, and process serving. A background check would be a nice change of pace, and it paid more.
The tinkling bell told me someone had just walked in the front door. Too early for Elmer. I should have locked the door until we officially opened at nine.
“May I help you?”
A middle-aged woman dressed to the nines and a foot taller than me held out her gloved hand. “Lucie Barnett.” She glanced at the NSU sign behind the reception desk. “Are you with NSU?” she asked.
Her handshake was so soft, it was barely noticeable. I introduced myself and led the way into my office. She closed the door behind us.
“I need your services.”
“Okay. What is it you need?”
“I want to know where my husband Nathan goes on Thursday nights.”
I explained my retainer fee, and before I could finish she had her wallet open.
I spent the next twenty minutes asking Mrs. Barnett questions about her husband and his suspicious behavior: Had he suddenly started taking better care of himself? Was he using different cologne? Was she getting hang-up calls at the house? Had he been working late? Had he been less interested in…“intimacy”?
She answered no to all of them.
She told me she wanted answers immediately and was willing to pay extra for it. Christmas was a month away, and she wanted to have just the right gift for him—new golf clubs if he’d been a good boy and divorce papers if he hadn’t.
I named this one Thursdays Out.
Between Shady Lane, Thursdays Out, process-serving, and skip traces, I had a full caseload. My next visit to Minnie would have to wait until after the New Year. In the meantime, I thought I’d send her a lit
tle thank-you note and tell her I looked forward to chatting with her again...soon.
When Elmer came in, he brought with him Danny Davis, someone for me to consider taking along on jobs when I didn’t feel comfortable going it alone. From a purely physical standpoint, he was perfect—over six feet tall, built like a sumo wrestler, with a face only a mother could love.
I spent an hour with Danny discussing my business and his background, all the while trying to determine whether we were compatible. In the end, I liked the guy. The only thing tough about him was his appearance—his personality and demeanor appeared to be just the opposite. I told him what I was prepared to pay, and he accepted my offer, which was conditional upon a favorable background check.
I didn’t need Danny for my Thursdays Out case, which I delved into, doing as much preliminary investigating as I could before Thursday when I could actually surveil Nathan Barnett. I didn’t find anything incriminating or even the least bit suspicious in the man’s background. He had been a lieutenant in the Army during World War II and had worked for Morton Salt in their engineering department for the past eight years.
While working on Thursdays Out, I’d made calls to the Detroit police, hospitals, and homeless shelters looking for Erma Fincutter and wove in aspects of the Shady Lane case, one of which was to clarify Jeff Porter’s son-in-law’s age. I questioned it because I’d read in the military record I pulled that he’d been a Navy SEAL during the Korean War, but based on the photograph Jeff had given me, the man looked way too young to have served in the military during that time period. I looked into the SEAL age requirements and did the math—one could have been as young as twenty-eight or as old as fifty-two to have been a SEAL between 1950 and 1953 during the Korean War. In the photo, he looked to be in his early twenties, at the most. A call to Jeff confirmed my suspicion—his son-in-law claimed to be twenty-five and had never mentioned serving in the armed forces. Something didn’t add up.
Regarding Anna Page 3