She felt herself tremble. “What do you want?”
“Leave it alone. Just leave it alone.” Click.
“Julia, you all right?” Linda asked. “You’re white as milk.”
“Just tired, I bet,” Susan chimed in. “You’ve been doing a lot of walking today.”
Julia shook her head and didn’t answer. Instead, she moved past Detective Reilly and his partner into the hallway. She wanted to be out of that office. She wanted to look, to observe—who knew what she was doing? The hallway was empty.
“Do you mind telling me who that was?” Sean asked as she led them forward.
“No one I know.” She felt embarrassed by the call, as if the detectives had heard her called a “crip.” She peered into offices and labs as they walked, searching for the person who would have seen the detective enter her office.
“Someone who upset you.”
“Just a prank caller.” That was a lie. The caller had scared her. What foolishness was she pursuing by not telling them? First she couldn’t wait to tell him about Dr. Jansen. Now she avoided telling him about the calls. Enough. She stopped and faced Sean.
“Someone asking me if I was talking to the detective again.”
“Again?” Sal asked.
“He called before.”
“Threatening calls?” Sean reached out and touched her arm, his face a mixture of concern and annoyance. “You’ve received others?”
“Just one. I thought it was a reporter wondering what was up.”
He expelled a quick breath and gritted his teeth. “When did it happen? Tell me everything.”
So she did, giving him information on this call and the last one, watching him take notes, feeling lighter and safer with every scrawl across the page. She should have told him about the first call when she’d received it. She was too used to soldiering on.
“You should tell us if you get another call—as soon as you get one,” Sal said to her, irritated.
“They’re probably nothing,” she said, “don’t you think?” She looked at Sean, but he didn’t smile.
“Do you have any enemies here? Anybody you argue with, don’t get along with?”
Maybe her boss, she thought, but she couldn’t imagine anyone else disliking her enough to want to frighten her.
“No one I can think of.”
“Maybe we should get someone watching her, tap the phone,” Sal offered.
She flashed them her bravest smile, an automatic reaction to any pain. “Really—that seems a bit dramatic.”
Sean shrugged. “It’s not a bad idea. After all, you were here when it happened. If the killer knows that…”
It could be nothing more than a prank, she thought. Sometimes people stared at her. Older boys had taunted her at a bus stop, calling her crip and gimp, her first week on the job. Once she’d overheard a woman telling her child to stay away from her so he wouldn’t “catch that disease.” She sometimes told people she’d hurt her leg in an accident to avoid letting them know she’d had polio.
She wasn’t in the mood to recount these sorry stories, so she led the detectives down the corridor, past two labs where quiet scientists looked through microscopes and recorded observations, past a row of windows that let in dusty sun, past closed supply closets and lavatory doors, each step a journey toward normalcy until at last, she felt comfortable again, secure in her world.
They were nearing her boss’s office, so she grabbed the opportunity to mention, at last, in the most casual of tones, Dr. Jansen’s excursion into Dr. Lowenstein’s files.
“Other doctors might need to access his material, after all,” she said and was proud of how she made it sound, as if Dr. Jansen was just one among several who had tried to get at the files. She wasn’t “telling” on him that way.
“I thought you said Dr. Lowenstein wasn’t involved in the polio research,” Sean said as she stopped in front of a half-closed door.
“He’s not.” And immediately got the implication. Why would Dr. Jansen need to access his files? But Sean’s attention was diverted to the office just beyond the door. Dr. Jansen had heard them approaching and was standing—to greet them or fend them off wasn’t clear.
“I was wondering if we could have a few words with you,” Sean asked, and before the doctor could answer, he had pushed the door open and let himself and his partner in.
***
“Susan, not you, too!” Julia stood in the doorway to Lowenstein’s lab staring at her colleague who, like Dr. Jansen earlier, was looking through drawers and papers. Julia had heard movement in the lab on her way back to her office and, despite her scare there, forced herself to investigate.
“He was my boss,” Susan said defensively, tapping a stack of papers on the lab counter, as if she had every right to make things right. “Besides, he was doing important work that needs to be preserved.”
Julia’s patience was at an end. “It can wait! He was doing work on muscle reactions. It hardly falls into the same category as that of the polio doctors!” And the more the investigation was bollixed up with people rummaging through Lowenstein’s things, the longer the labs were disrupted, delaying that important work.
Susan cocked her head, returning anger with anger. “Dr. Mike wasn’t working on your precious polio,” she whined, “but he was a good doctor doing things that would help people— people who could be helped!”
This was too much for Julia, whose hand shook on the cane as she leaned to the side. “Dr. Mike could have helped people like me if he’d deigned to put his mind and talent to it instead of wasting it on endless busy work that looked good in journals but had no practical value!”
She turned and left the lab, hurrying back to her office. As she crossed the threshold, her gaze caught sight of a short figure in the hall. Earl Dagley, the animal tender, stood sheepishly in the corridor near the stairwell, a sheaf of supply request forms in his free hand. When he saw her, he smiled a quick scared grin of acknowledgement and continued on his way. Damn again. He’d heard her “speech” and probably thought she was a bitter survivor lashing out at the world— speaking ill of the dead, to boot!
***
Sean and Sal learned two things in their afternoon interviewing.
Dr. Jansen was either an extremely nervous man, or he, like Susan Schlager, was hiding something. And he fit the description of the “colleague” who’d gained access to Lowenstein’s house the morning of the murder. Thin, medium height, long face, brown hair. Throughout his talk with Sean, he kept looking at his watch and answering every question with a question of his own—why do you need to know that, who else have you talked with, have you contacted any of Dr. Lowenstein’s friends?
They asked where he was on the fateful morning and he was quick with a reply. At home. His housemaid could verify it. He gave them her name and number. After the Jansen interview, they’d split up, knocking on lab doors and chatting up anyone they came across, doing a far more thorough sweep of the lab and its nearby offices than either man had been able to accomplish earlier. They talked to nearly a dozen folks, from high-ranking researchers to lab technicians. Nobody was close to Lowenstein or Lowe or whoever he was. But they all thought he was a swell guy. Kind. Thoughtful. And generous—he’d given the cleaning lady fur-lined gloves at Christmas when she’d complained of the cold stiffening her hands. She’d not been around the morning of the murder, she told them with regret. She’d taken the day off because she was going to work the weekend.
“He was a swell guy all right,” Sal said cynically at the end of the day. “Seems like only one person in the world hated him. Hated him enough to kill him.”
***
Tired but satisfied, Sean pulled into his street later than usual that night. Mrs. Buchanan had agreed to stay so he could do a proper grocery shopping, and now he was loaded up with enough supplies to last through an atomic bomb disaster. He’d even bought a small box of chocolates to sweeten Mrs. Buchanan’s disposition. Although she’d agreed to the ext
ra hours, she always acted as if it was an imposition once he came home.
His domestic problems in hand, his thoughts turned back to the case. It was moving slowly. That nervous Dr. Jansen had begun to look good to them, but Sal had checked out his alibi and it was right as rain as far as they could tell. Jansen’s housekeeper had been at his home and she’d vouched for him. The doc had been home during the morning hours—the time that the coroner had estimated the death had occurred. He hadn’t left the house until after the folks at Hopkins had called in the death. Still, they should keep an eye on him. Housekeepers could be bought. Jansen’d given out her name and number awfully quickly.
Sean wanted to solve this case as quickly as possible. That would impress O’Brien and maybe get both him and Sal back on the right foot. He loosened his collar as he pulled up to his house, easing in behind an old black Ford.
With a dry throat, he recognized the car. Dr. Spencer.
Chapter Eight
JULIA’S BEDROOM STILL FELT as if it belonged to a little girl. Its cheery pink ruffled bedspread and matching curtains, the dresser with embroidered doilies and velveteen jewelry box, her tattered copies of Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice on a shelf near the window stopped time to a period of her life when she didn’t have to worry about the weight on her leg.
She’d begged off after-dinner socializing with her family—her sister Beth was visiting with her children—and retreated to her room so she could think about her tumultuous afternoon and why she’d been so filled with anger for most of it.
It wasn’t just Dr. Jansen. Or even Will. She’d been shocked at the things she’d said about kind Dr. Mike. Where had that come from—that well of resentment? She hadn’t been aware she’d harbored those feelings until they’d spilled out of her mouth at poor Susan. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the dresser at the end of her bed. Who was she? What was she capable of?
She perched primly on the edge of the bed, flipping the pages of the copy of Life she’d taken from the table downstairs.
Saying she was tired had been no lie. She was drained, feeling as hollow as her cane. She wished she could curl her legs under her and read like she had when she was younger, but it would have taken more effort than it was worth. It’s amazing how many muscles it takes to keep oneself upright without effort. Her bad leg’s calf muscles were useless, and her thigh muscles were weak. Bending that leg under her torso meant thinking about using her other good leg’s muscles, along with those that threaded up her lower back, to balance herself so she wouldn’t topple over.
And she hadn’t even realized how much she enjoyed sitting that way until it had required concentration to do it. Her mind roamed to the brink of this thought before retreating from its implications.
What comfort do I now take for granted that could be snatched away in the blink of an eye?
Dead tired from a long day, she closed her eyes. She’d stayed at the office until six-thirty typing that stupid article for Dr. Jansen, only to find he’d left for the day when she’d dropped the finished draft on his desk. She’d had to admit she was partly relieved he wasn’t there. After Detective Reilly had left that afternoon, Dr. Jansen had come into the office and acted like an interrogator himself, barking out questions to each of the secretaries—which of you girls is telling the detective foolish stories? And then he’d lectured them all—when he’d known darn well it was she alone he should be talking to—about the importance of the researchers’ work, how they all needed access to important material and that included material in Dr. Lowenstein’s office. And how he himself would never violate a police directive if he’d known about it in the first place.
Julia hadn’t mentioned Susan’s foray into the closed-off lab. She was tired of being reprimanded for doing what was right and proper.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a soft knock at her door and the entrance of her sister Beth. Beth had been at the house when Julia had returned with her father and Helen, whom they’d picked up on the way home. Julia could hear the raucous cries of Beth’s three boys in the living room below. The television set was on, and the muffled sounds of a variety show carried upstairs.
“Can we talk?” Beth asked, brushing a stray hair from her cheek with one hand and rubbing her distended stomach with the other. Beth was seven months pregnant with her fourth child.
After Julia nodded yes, Beth plopped onto the bed next to her sister, laughing as she nearly fell over to the side, adjusting for her extra weight.
Julia had a hard time remembering when her sister hadn’t looked harried. Her long, straight brown hair was always in an untidy bun, her clothes were often stained, and her stockings holey or nicked with runs. Beth’s husband, Stuart Ridgeman, an ex-Marine, worked at Bethlehem Steel, and they lived in Dundalk on the eastern side of the city in a new bungalow. Stu was a rugged, silent man, and Julia would have wondered if Beth had a hard time with him if it weren’t for the fact that Beth was perpetually cheerful. When Julia had gone to work at the labs five years ago, Beth had been a little stand-offish, afraid she’d catch something from her sister that would endanger her pregnancies and children. But gradually that fear had worn off, replaced by Beth’s usual sunny nature. Of the three girls, Julia reflected, Beth was most like their father in personality—open, happy, always ready to find the silver lining in even the darkest clouds.
“You look beat,” Beth said, leaning forward to scrutinize Julia’s face.
“Had to work late,” Julia said. And then she’d come home to hear Will had already called, and she’d had to call him back or look terribly rude to her family, but all she’d wanted to do was eat and rest.
“I have to pack up the rascals soon but I wanted to ask you something,” Beth continued. “Dad worries me.”
Julia shifted her weight and sat up straighter. Oh no, something else to fret over. “Why?”
“He looked awfully tired tonight.”
“You think everybody looks tired!” Julia lightly punched her sister in the arm. “You just told me I did.”
“Well, you do.” Beth grinned at her sister, then turned serious. “But Dad looked a little worse for wear to me at dinner tonight. He didn’t eat a lot.”
Julia rolled her eyes and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Macaroni with canned gravy and Esskay hamburgers isn’t exactly gourmet, Beth. We all love Mutti, but she’s not the best cook.”
Beth relaxed and smiled again. “I know, I know. But he usually eats more. At least a full helping. He didn’t finish tonight. And last Sunday, he looked—oh, haggard.”
“Some people might say you look haggard.”
“And they’d be right,” Beth quickly agreed, laughing. “But I’m young and strong and can take it.” She turned more serious again. “Dad actually complained to me about his back hurting.”
This caught Julia’s attention. She never remembered her father complaining about any physical problem, ever. Even when he had a cold, he never mentioned it, just sneezed and coughed and blew his nose and didn’t say a word. He’d broken a bone in his foot three years ago and hadn’t even gone to the doctor until they’d forced him to after watching him limp around for two days.
“I think we need to get Helen driving,” Beth continued.
“What does that have to do with Dad?”
“If Helen drove, she could pick you up when you have to work late.”
“I don’t work late that often….”
Beth looked at her from the tops of her eyes. “At least once a week. Sometimes more. And sometimes Dad just comes and gets you at the regular time.”
Suddenly Julia felt guilty. Life would have been easier for her family if she’d continued working at the law firm down the road. But that would have meant not meeting Will, not getting engaged, and her parents had been overjoyed at that news. When they married, Will would be responsible for taking her home from work, and that would relieve her father of the job. She was lucky. Will was a good man.
“I can tr
y to talk to her, too,” Julia said. “Do you want to do it together?”
Beth tilted her head to one side. “It might help. Might make it seem more serious.”
“We’d have to do it when Mom and Dad weren’t around,” Julia said.
“Or maybe—” Beth snapped her fingers and sat forward. “Maybe we don’t tell them. Maybe we don’t even tell Helen.”
“What?”
“I drive,” Beth continued. “I could teach Helen. I could just take her out in the car one day, to an empty lot, and start teaching her.”
Julia laughed. “You mean kidnap her to teach her to drive?”
“Well, yes, I guess so!”
They spent another quarter hour talking about Beth’s plan and about Julia’s job. Beth managed to get the story of Julia’s bad day out of her, even down to the details that were still bothering her.
“…and then he buzzed me on the phone and asked me to make reservations for him to a conference in California, some small researchers group he’s never been interested in before.”
“So what?” Beth stood, her hand on her own aching back. One of the boys was crying, and it was clear she was anxious to leave now that they’d solved the problem she’d come in to talk about.
“A few minutes later he buzzed me to—”
Their mother’s voice carried up the stairs. “Andrew bumped his knee, Beth. He is wanting his mother to give it a kiss.” She pronounced “kiss” as “küss.”
“Be there in a sec!”
“Anyway,” Julia continued, easing herself to a standing position, “he buzzed me a few minutes later to say I should just book the passage to California and he’d handle the return trip.”
Beth was moving toward the door. “Maybe he has friends out there he wants to visit. I don’t understand why that’s a big deal.”
Julia could see her sister’s impatience. “You better get going,” she told Beth. She waved her toward the door. “And let me know how I can help with the kidnapping scheme.”
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