LOST TO THE WORLD

by Libby Sternberg

  She checked her makeup and hair and slipped on stockings, hooking the garters quickly and smoothing her legs. She buttoned the demure white silk blouse, stepped into the skirt, and pulled on the jacket. She took one last puff of the cigarette and grabbed her purse and gloves.

  She might not have had a plan when she handed in her resignation, but she had one now. She’d already put in a call to her friend Diane Rivers who was both relieved and horrified to hear what she’d done. Diane would happily provide a letter or call of recommendation. And Diane wouldn’t volunteer the information about Brigitta no longer working at Ryan, Dennis and Smathers. Prospective employers who talked to the office manager would assume Brigitta was still there, and Diane wouldn’t see the need to set them straight.

  It had been foolish to quit before she had another job. But she was fixing that as best she could now.

  Yes, I work for Ryan, Dennis and Smathers, she heard herself say, but I’ve been wanting to leave for some time to work in a firm that—and here she’d say whatever it took to make them believe she’d had her eye on that particular office for some time. She was counting on her poise and self-confidence to convey just how level-headed, capable, and eager she really was.

  Brigitta bent to take one last look at herself in the mirror. She’d get a job. As fast as possible. She’d calculated her savings, and she knew she could last for six months or more without a position. But she didn’t want to chip too far into that pile of hard-earned cash. She still cherished the dream of owning her home. She’d find something. She knew precisely what law firms she wanted to visit, and she had the cab fare in her purse to get her downtown. She planned to be finished by five at which time Sean had said he’d stop by her office to pick her up. She’d be waiting out front as if nothing had happened. No use telling him the sordid tale.

  ***

  “German music?”

  “That’s what she said.” Sal draped his jacket on his chair and sat down, throwing a couple of bologna sandwiches at Sean that he’d picked up on the way back to the office. “Why—what you thinking?”

  “Well, he’s not Jewish. But he hides under cover as one. And someone’s blackmailing him but he decides to make it stop. You said Schlager had an accent—he could be German, too. Maybe we should talk to his neighbors. Could be Lowenstein was running from something he did during the war and decided to stop running. Only whatever he’s running from is something Schlager is involved in, too….” Sean flipped a pencil over, then opened one of the sandwiches. “Hiding out as a Jew is a pretty good cover.”

  Sal shook his head. “By all accounts, this guy was a saint. You said the rental agent said he was good to animals. Angie Hamilton said he was more than a good boss to her and even tended to her kid. Everybody else says he was generous to a fault. Gave all his money to charity, according to his lawyer…” He shrugged and began eating as well.

  “Guilt. He could be atoning for what he did during the war.” Sean wiped a crumb from his mouth. It was the only theory he had so far, but it still seemed awfully far-fetched. “Besides, some of those characters they hanged probably loved children and small animals. They just hated Jews.”

  “Lowenstein was good to Angie and she’s colored. Those Nazis weren’t too fond of Negroes, if I recall,” Sal said.

  “Susan Schlager wasn’t too fond of Jews,” Sean said, remembering how she’d made a point of saying Dr. Lowenstein was different from “them.” A theory danced in his head. Her husband—had he been blackmailing Lowenstein? Had Steve Schlager sent his wife to get the latest payment the morning after the death? No, if Lowenstein was a money machine for them, Schlager wouldn’t have wanted him dead. He’d have wanted him doling out the goods every month. Susan had been looking for something else.

  “Is there some agency or something we could contact to find out who’s still on the loose?” Sal looked over his shoulder to make sure O’Brien was nowhere to be seen and then propped his feet up on his desk.

  “You mean like a gallery of Wanted Posters?” Sean smiled. “Don’t know, Sallie.”

  “C’mon, don’t call me that.” But Sal smiled, too. “You seeing my sister again?”

  “Tonight, as a matter of fact.”

  Sal just nodded. “Back to your idea—how’s Jansen figure into this?”

  “He’s a ‘fellow traveler,’ in the soup with Dr. X. Afraid Dr. X is going to expose them both—maybe because of the blackmail? So he’s trying to get the goods but it’s too late….”

  “He offed Dr. X to keep him from divulging the secrets?”

  “Maybe…”

  “Now that Dr. X is dead, though, it seems like Jansen’d more likely be on the run—if he did it, that is.”

  “That’s my thought. He’s hanging around too long.” And so was Schlager, if he was guilty of something. Sean sat up straight. “Wait a minute—Jansen’s headed out of town. To California for some conference.”

  “He coming back?”

  “I don’t know.” Sean crumbled up the sandwich paper and threw it in the wastebasket by his desk. “We need to talk to him again.”

  “I can do it.”

  Sean started to protest—he wouldn’t mind going back to the hospital and talking to Julia Dell—but thought better of it. Sal could handle the doctor. Sean wanted to look at the house again. Lowenstein had to have kept some family mementoes—unless he really was a cold-hearted prick. Sean had gone through the house too quickly the other day because of Mrs. Wellstone hovering about waiting. And then once he’d discovered the personal papers and the empty file drawer, he’d not pursued it further.

  Sal finished his sandwich and threw his paper away as well. “Only thing is, if Jansen was a fugitive Nazi, like you think Dr. X was, Jansen either ain’t German or learned English pretty good. No accent.”

  “Did Lowenstein have one?”

  “Nobody’s mentioned it.”

  “Find out, Sal.” Sean stood, reaching for his jacket.

  “You know, we also gotta find the blackmailer—if there is one.” Sal stood, too. “You think maybe that was Jansen? Maybe he was the one doing the threatening but things got too hot…” His voice petered out as his theory ran into a brick wall.

  “Don’t think so.” Sean smiled. “At least we’re getting closer. We’re zeroing in on Lowenstein.”

  As they made their way to the door, Sal offered another angle. “You know, we shouldn’t be neglecting that crip secretary. She found the body. Sometimes the one who did it makes the call to the police…”

  ***

  Julia was angry. She’d heard from Mrs. Wilcox that a polio outbreak was suspected on the Eastern shore. They weren’t positive yet, but it would mean the season was beginning early and the vaccine work wasn’t yet done. It would mean more children hurt as bad as she and worse. And all because…

  Because everything was too slow. The doctors arguing with each other. Their plodding. And the obstacles in the way. She wondered if the murder investigation distracted them, slowed them down.

  She’d had to miss lunch because Dr. Jansen insisted she retype his article—all because he’d remembered a paragraph he wanted to insert on the second page. Even she could see it added nothing to the paper and was merely a bit of excess verbiage where he waxed poetic—or at least thought he did—about his calculations. All it did was create extra work for her. If this was how they worked in the labs…no wonder it was all too slow.

  When she’d read the paragraph, she’d silently fumed, her good foot tapping nervously under her desk in the empty office. Linda was meeting her fiancé for lunch because he had the day off, and Susan was out again.

  The thought of Susan made Julia’s skin prickle with irritation. Susan was one of the reasons Julia felt she couldn’t afford to look anything but dedicated to her job now. Not only was Dr. Jansen still acting colder than usual after his interview with Detective Reilly. Julia’d also learned that Susan—a girl she’d thought was at least friendly if not an outright friend—had gone behi
nd her back to try to make the case for why she should have Julia’s position. And on the very day after Dr. Mike’s murder! Susan had gone into Mrs. Wilcox and told her—

  Julia took a sharp breath and stared straight ahead at the wall above her typewriter, biting her lower lip, willing tears to stay put. She would not cry. Dammit, she would not cry.

  Linda had told her before leaving for lunch. Linda had grabbed her hat and gloves to head out, stopping by Julia’s desk and leaning in so no passers-by could hear.

  “Listen, I didn’t know if I should say anything but it’s eating me up not to.” She’d looked quickly at the open door. “Susan asked Mrs. Wilcox to tell Dr. Jansen she was interested in your position.”

  At first, Julia had been merely amused—and maybe a little filled with pity for poor, desperate Susan. Then Linda had buried those feelings with her next revelation.

  “She told Mrs. Wilcox it would be safer for you if you were working somewhere on the first floor.” Linda had tried to laugh to make it sound silly. She had then tried to reassure Julia. “Don’t worry about it, hon. Everybody knows Sue’s slow as molasses—in more ways than one!”

  But all Julia could think about was how slow she herself was, weighted down with the brace, the cane. She reached down to push the metal away from her leg. It was irritating the skin, rubbing a red spot on her calf. Some people thought that the paralysis meant you had no sensation in the affected limbs. That wasn’t the case. She had sensation, just no control. She remembered when she lay in the hospital the first week during the acute phase of the disease, her body useless to her from the neck down. Trapped, she’d watched in horror when a wasp had flown in the window and landed on her arm. When she’d called out for the nurse, the insect had stung her. She’d felt that all right. But been unable to shoo the pest away.

  As upset as she was, she had to finish the paper. Dr. Jansen would be back by two-thirty at the latest. Finish the paper, make the hotel reservations, work so hard and cheerfully he’d want no other secretary but Julia…

  She typed and typed, her thoughts wandering. With bitter satisfaction, she thought of the bad impression Susan was making being out two days in a row with no excuse. That certainly wouldn’t look good to Mrs. Wilcox.

  But would Dr. Jansen even notice Susan was away? Maybe he was already considering her as a replacement for slow, clumsy Julia.

  Her fingers froze as anger cascaded from head to toe, warming her with a deep glowing blush. She was a good secretary to Dr. Jansen, staying late when he needed her, putting up with his moods, remaining silent when he misremembered his instructions to her and berated her for doing the wrong thing.

  And all for what? He never noticed. He never complimented her. He’d snatch up a new secretary, one who was whole, in an instant.

  Why did she try so hard to please him when he probably saw her as little more than a charity case? He was a cripple himself, she thought. Cut off from the world, never happy, always brooding about something. She wondered if the detectives knew that Dr. Jansen hadn’t been in on the morning of the murders, if they’d pursued that angle at all.

  Her palms sweaty, she rubbed them on a handkerchief tucked under her wristwatch. She looked at the time. Mrs. Wilcox would be out to lunch now. The detectives had looked at Dr. Lowenstein’s file, but probably not Dr. Jansen’s. At least not yet.

  Julia pushed her chair back and reached for her cane. She’d only be gone a few minutes. Just long enough to get that file.

  ***

  Sean took his time going through the old house. He made sure he parked down the block so Mrs. Wellstone wouldn’t be tempted to “visit” with him.

  Sean always felt his strong suit was thoroughness—when he had the time, that is. Rushed, he could make snap judgments and overlook important details. But he had the patience to work a scene inch by inch if given the time and opportunity. He had it now.

  The house retained the damp chill of the previous days, and Sean left his coat on. He started in the bedroom, looking in bedside tables, dresser drawers, closets, even under the mattress and behind pictures on the walls. He noted that the pictures were either European prints or landscapes—mostly forests and mountains, American scenes that reminded him of schoolbook pictures of the land the settlers had found.

  He approached each room with similar method, starting in one corner and working outward, pulling up rugs and looking for false bottoms or backs to drawers and cabinets. Several hours later, he’d finished the upstairs.

  He had nothing in hand but it wasn’t wasted work. Immersing himself in the dead man’s possessions began to give him a sense of who he was. He was tidy and organized—his shirts and ties were arranged by color. He was not from around here—the pictures he chose spoke of a yearning for someplace in his past. He was a religious man—the books by his bedside were spiritual in nature, a well-thumbed Bible (New Testament included), meditations on the book of Job and a thin collection of essays on the subject of the Prodigal Son.

  Well, you knew some of this already, he reminded himself as he went downstairs. His record at Hopkins said he was from upstate New York.

  Downstairs, he started in the kitchen but found nothing there but meticulously organized dishes. Then on to the living room. Here a large oil painting hung over the mantelpiece, something in dark rusts and greens, an Indian, small in comparison to the landscape around him, standing on the edge of a precipice looking into a lush valley below with blue-shadowed mountains in the distance. New York, thought Sean. Something out of Last of the Mohicans, a book he remembered from his boyhood days. He should get it for Robby and Daniel.

  A cobalt blue bottle sat on a table by the sofa. Sean picked it up and fingered it. It was ordinary, not at all like the expensive and delicate pieces that decorated other tables in the room—porcelain cigarette boxes, German figurines, silver vases and crystal decanters. This was heavy and empty. He sniffed it but smelled only dust. An old medicine bottle. The kind you’d have found decades ago before the war. Was it a memento from the victim’s early years in medical school? It seemed out of place. Sean pocketed it and kept looking.

  At last he landed in the music room. He’d put it off because he knew it would require the most comprehensive look. All those books on shelves along one wall. All that music. He leafed through what rested on the piano—all German music, Beethoven, Mahler, even some Wagner. He took a few seconds to read some titles of books. Again, religious themes—contemplations on the psalms, commentaries on the gospels, a few books by well-known preachers and even a hymnal. Other than that, there were some novels by acclaimed authors, some old classics, and tattered, well-used medical books.

  Sean began with these, pulling them down looking for nameplates or even a handwritten name. Nothing. Someone had taken the trouble to rip these out. The doctor had left nothing to lead to his past identity.

  As he replaced the last of these, Sean’s gaze fell on an old copy of the book he’d just been thinking about. Last of the Mohicans. He smiled—he’d been right to assume the doctor’s yearning for that stretch of the country.

  He reached up to grab the book, thinking again how much Danny and Robby would enjoy it. Maybe he’d read it aloud, chapter by chapter for them, in the evenings. It would be better than the story he read last night—that was from a book the nuns had let the boys have. He flipped through the pages, thinking of how his sons would like this story of adventure and heroism.

  As the yellowed pages flew by, a half dozen photographs drifted to the floor.

  Splayed about his feet were old pictures, some black-and-white, some in brownish tones, the kind of photos professional photographers take.

  Sean shook the book to see if there were more and bent to gather those that had dropped around his feet. Something—something from the victim’s past, something personal, something besides the blue bottle and the professional resume.

  Family photos. An unsmiling man with bushy hair and moustache—a slightly thinner version of the deceased—stoo
d beside a seated white-dressed beauty with a waspish waist and Gibson girl hair. She held a baby on her lap. Another child—a boy in sailor suit, looking to be about two or three—stood by her knees. The other photographs were similar formal poses, several of the children as they grew older, staring into the camera with serious, wide eyes. The only un-posed shot was of the man, sleeves held up with garters, white apron on, standing beside a shorter man with similar features and identical moustache, in front of a storefront of some sort. Sean could make out only two letters painted on its surface—LL. But there was the source of the bottle—Sean could see a neatly arranged display in the window. Six bottles in three tiers sat in the corner by the door. A pharmacy of some sort?

  He turned it over. Of all the photographs, this was the only one with any writing on the back. “Father with Uncle Heinrich. 1929.”

  Sean spent another hour meticulously shaking out each book in the room, but nothing yielded the same kind of treasure he now held in his pocket.

  ***

  “No, Dr. Lowenstein didn’t have a German accent,” Linda said, smiling. She looked at Sal as if he had two heads.

  Sal sighed and wondered if he should have put it differently. He was such a bumbler. He’d already gotten on the wrong side of the Wilcox woman. He’d asked her what kind of checking the labs did on who they hired—he’d wanted to know how they’d verified if Lowenstein was who he said he was. But it had come out sounding like he thought Wilcox herself did a shoddy job, and she’d been cool, almost huffy, at his implication.

  “What about Dr. Jansen?” Sal looked at the secretary, wondering if she knew more than she’d told him about Susan Schlager. He’d already asked her if she’d heard anything, and Linda hadn’t a clue. Where was the one with the bum leg? She hadn’t been in when he’d arrived. “I mean, was he from Germany—his parents maybe?”