Women on the Case

by Sara Paretsky

  She snorted and started to hand the picture back, then took it to study more closely. “She knew I never liked to see her in pants, so she generally wore a skirt when she came up here. But she looks real cute in that outfit, real cute. You know, I guess I can see where she might have confused him with Carl Bader. Although Carl was dark-haired and didn’t have a mustache, there is a little something around the forehead.”

  “And who was Carl Bader?”

  “Oh, that’s ancient history. He left town and we never heard anything more about it.”

  All I could get her to say about him was that he’d been connected to their church and she never did believe half the gossip some of the members engaged in. “That Mrs. Hoffer always overindulged her children, let them say anything and get away with it. We brought Lisa up to show proper respect for people in authority. Cleaned her mouth out with soap and whipped her so hard she didn’t sit for a week the one time she tried taking part in some of that trashy talk.”

  More she wouldn’t say, so I took the picture with me to the library and looked up old copies of the local newspaper. In Slaybells Ring, Nan Carruthers was eight when the pastor molested her, so I checked 1965 through 1967 for stories about Bader and anyone named Hoffer. All I found was a little blurb saying Bader had left the United Pentecostal Church of God in Holiness in 1967 to join a television ministry in Atlanta, and that he’d gone so suddenly that the church didn’t have time to throw him a going-away party.

  I spent a weary afternoon trying to find Mrs. Hoffer. There were twenty-seven Hoffers in the Rhinelander phone book; six were members of the United Pentecostal Church. The church secretary was pleasant and helpful, but it wasn’t until late in the day that Mrs. Matthew Hoffer told me the woman I wanted, Mrs. Barnabas Hoffer, had quit the church over the episode about her daughter.

  “Caused a lot of hard feeling in the church. Some people believed the children, and they quit. Others figured it was just mischief, children who like to make themselves look interesting. That Lisa Macauley was one. I’m sorry she got herself killed down in Chicago, but in a way I’m not surprised—seemed like she was always sort of daring you to smack her, the stories she made up and the way she put herself forward. Not that Louise Macauley spared the rod, mind you, but sometimes I think you can beat a child too much for its own good. Anyway, once people saw little Lisa joining in with Katie Hoffer in accusing the pastor no one took it seriously. No one except Gertrude—Katie’s mom, I mean. She still bears a grudge against all of us who stood by Pastor Bader.”

  And finally, at nine o’clock, I was sitting on an overstuffed horsehair settee in Gertrude Hoffer’s living room, looking at a cracked color photo of two unhappy children. I had to take Mrs. Hoffer’s word that they were Katie and Lisa—their faces were indistinct, and at this point in the picture’s age so were their actions.

  “I found it when I was doing his laundry. Pastor Bader wasn’t married, so all us church ladies took it in turn to look after his domestic wants. Usually he was right there to put his own clothes away, but this one time he was out and I was arranging his underwear for him and found this whole stack of pictures. I couldn’t believe it at first, and then when I came on Katie’s face—well—I snatched it up and ran out of there.

  “At first I thought it was some evilness the children dreamed up on their own, and that he had photographed them to show us, show the parents what they got up to. That was what he told my husband when Mr. Hoffer went to talk to him about it. It took me a long time to see that a child wouldn’t figure out something like that on her own, but I never could get any of the other parents to pay me any mind. And that Louise Macauley, she just started baking pies for Pastor Bader every night of the week, whipped poor little Lisa for telling me what he made her and Katie get up to. It’s a judgment on her, it really is, her daughter getting herself killed like that.”

  V

  It was hard for me to find someone in the Chicago Police Department willing to try to connect Claud Barnett with Carl Bader. Once they’d done that, though, the story unraveled pretty fast. Lisa had recognized him in Sun Valley and put the bite on him—not for money, but for career advancement, just as her heroine did her own old pastor in Slaybells Ring. No one would ever be able to find out for sure, but the emotional torment she put Nan Carruthers through must have paralleled Lisa’s own misery. She was a success, she’d forced her old tormentor to make her a success, but it must have galled her—as it did her heroine—to pretend to admire him, to sit in on his show, and to see a film of torment overlay his face.

  When Barnett read Slaybells, he probably began to worry that Lisa wouldn’t be able to keep his secret to herself much longer. The police did find evidence of the threatening letters in his private study. The state argued that Barnett sent Lisa the threatening letters, then persuaded her to hire me to protect her. At that point Barnett didn’t have anything special against me, but I was a woman. He figured if he could start enough public conflict between a woman detective and Lisa, he’d be able to fool the nightman, Reggie Whitman, into believing he was sending a woman up to Lisa’s apartment on the fatal night. It was only later that he’d learned about my progressive politics—that was just icing oh his cake, to be able to denounce me on his show.

  Of course, not all this came out right away—some of it didn’t emerge until the trial. That’s when I also learned that Whitman, besides being practically a saint, had badly failing vision. On a cold night anyone could have passed himself off as me.

  Between Murray and Beth Blacksin I got a lot of public vindication, and Sal and Queenie took me to dinner with Belle Fontaine to celebrate on the day the guilty verdict came in. We were all disappointed that they only slapped him with second-degree murder. But what left me gasping for air was a public opinion poll that came out the next afternoon. Even though other examples of his child-molesting behavior had come to light during the trial, his listeners believed he was innocent of all charges.

  “The femmunists made it all up trying to discredit him,” one woman explained that afternoon on the air. “And then they got The New York Times to print their lies.”

  Not even Queenie’s reserve Veuve Clicquot could wipe that bitter taste out of my mouth.

  Best known for her detective Sharon McCone, MARCIA MULLER’s sixteenth novel with the San Francisco sleuth, A Wild and Lonely Place, was published in August 1995. Besides writing mysteries, Muiler is also an accomplished Western storyteller. A winner of the Anthony and American Mystery awards, Muiler was also awarded the Life Achievement award by the Private Eye Writers of America. She was born in Detroit and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Michigan.

  The Cracks in the Sidewalk

  Marcia Muiler

  Gracie

  I’m leaning against my mailbox and the sun’s shining on my face and my pigeons are coming round. Storage box number 27368. The mail carrier’s already been here—new one, because he didn’t know my name and kind of shied away from me like I smell bad. Which I probably do. I’ll have him trained soon, though, and he’ll say “Hi, Gracie” and pass the time of day and maybe bring me something to eat. Just the way the merchants in this block do. It’s been four years now, and I’ve got them all trained. Box 27368—it’s gotten to be like home.

  Home …

  Nope, I can’t think about that. Not anymore.

  Funny how the neighborhood’s changed since I started taking up space on this corner with my cart and my pigeons, on my blanket on good days, on plastic in the rain. Used to be the folks who lived in this part of San Francisco was Mexicans and the Irish ran the bars and used-furniture stores. Now you see a lot of Chinese or whatever, and there’re all these new restaurants and coffeehouses. Pretty fancy stuff. But that’s okay; they draw a nice class of people, and the waiters bring me the leftovers. And my pigeons are still the same—good company. They’re sort of like family.

  Family …

  No, I can’t think about that anymore.
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br />   Cecily

  I’ve been watching the homeless woman they call Gracie for two years now, ever since I left my husband and moved into the studio over the Lucky Shamrock and started to write my novel. She shows up every morning promptly at nine and sits next to the mail-storage box and holds court with the pigeons. People in the neighborhood bring her food, and she always shares it with the birds. You’d expect them to flock all over her, but instead they hang back respectfully, each waiting its turn. It’s as if Gracie and they speak the same language, although I’ve never heard her say a word to them.

  How to describe her without relying on the obvious stereotypes of homeless persons? Not that she isn’t stereotypical: She’s ragged and she smells bad and her gray-brown hair is long and tangled. But in spite of the wrinkles and roughness of her skin, she seems ageless, and on days like this when she smiles and turns her face up to the sun she has a strange kind of beauty. Beauty disrupted by what I take to be flashes of pain. Not physical, but psychic pain—the reason, perhaps, that she took up residence on the cracked sidewalk of the Mission District.

  I wish I knew more about her.

  All I know are these few things: She’s somewhere in her late thirties, a few years older than I. She told the corner grocer that. She has what she calls a “hidey-hole” where she goes to sleep at night—someplace safe, she told the mailman, where she won’t be disturbed. She guards her shopping cart full of plastic bags very carefully; she’d kill anyone who touched it, she warned my landlord. She’s been coming here nearly four years and hasn’t missed a single day; Deirdre, the bartender at the Lucky Shamrock, has kept track. She was born in Oroville, up in the foothills of the Sierras; she mentioned that to my neighbor when she saw him wearing a sweatshirt saying OROVILLE—BEST LITTLE CITY BY A DAM SITE.

  And that’s it.

  Maybe there’s a way to find out more about her. Amateur detective work. Call it research, if I feel a need to justify it. Gracie might make a good character for a story. Anyway, it would be something to fool around with while I watch the mailbox and listen for the phone, hoping somebody’s going to buy my damn novel. Something to keep my mind off this endless cycle of hope and rejection. Something to keep my mind off my regrets.

  Yes, maybe I’ll try to find out more about Gracie.

  Gracie

  Today I’m studying on the cracks in the sidewalk. They’re pretty complicated, running this way and that, and on the surface they look dark and empty. But if you got down real close and put your eye to them there’s no telling what you might see. In a way the cracks’re like people. Or music.

  Music …

  Nope, that’s something else I can’t think about.

  Seems the list of what I can’t think on is getting longer and longer. Bits of the past tug at me, and then I’ve got to push them away. Like soft summer nights when it finally cools and the lawn sprinklers twirl on the grass. Like the sleepy eyes of a little boy when you tuck him into bed. Like the feel of a guitar in your hands.

  My hands.

  My little boy.

  Soft summer nights up in Oroville.

  No.

  Forget the cracks, Gracie. There’s that woman again—the one with the curly red hair and green eyes that’re always watching. Watching you. Talking about you to the folks in the stores and the restaurants. Wonder what she wants?

  Not my cart—it better not be my cart. My gold’s in there.

  My gold …

  No. That’s at the top of the list.

  Cecily

  By now I’ve spoken with everybody in the neighborhood who’s had any contact with Grade, and only added a few details to what I already know. She hasn’t been back to Oroville for over ten years, and she never will go back; somebody there did a “terrible thing” to her. When she told that to my neighbor, she became extremely agitated and made him a little afraid. He thought she might be about to tip over into a violent psychotic episode, but the next time he saw her she was as gentle as ever. Frankly, I think he’s making too much of her rage. He ought to see the heap of glass I had to sweep off my kitchenette floor yesterday when yet another publisher returned my manuscript.

  Gracie’s also quite familiar with the Los Angeles area—she demonstrated that in several random remarks she made to Deirdre. She told at least three people that she came to San Francisco because the climate is mild and she knew she’d have to live on the street. She sings to the pigeons sometimes, very low, and stops right away when she realizes somebody’s listening. My landlord’s heard her a dozen times or more, and he says she’s got a good voice. Oh, yes—she doesn’t drink or do drugs. She told one of the waiters at Gino’s that she has to keep her mind clear so she can control it—whatever that means.

  Not much to go on. I wish I could get a full name for her; I’m not even sure Gracie is her name. God, I’m glad to have this little project to keep me occupied! Disappointments pile on disappointments lately, and sometimes I feel as if I were trapped in one of those cracks in the sidewalk that obviously fascinate Gracie. As if I’m being squeezed tighter and tighter …

  Enough of that. I think I’ll go to the library and see if they have that book on finding people that I heard about. Technically, Gracie isn’t lost, but her identity’s missing. Maybe the book would give me an idea of how to go about locating it.

  Gracie

  Not feeling so good today, I don’t know why, and that red-haired woman’s snooping around again. Who the hell is she? A fan?

  Yeah, sure. A fan of old Gracie. Old Gracie, who smells bad and has got the look of a loser written all over her.

  House of cards, he used to say. It can all collapse at any minute, and then how’ll you feel about your sacrifices? Sacrifices. The way he said it, it sounded like a filthy word. But I never gave up anything that mattered. Well, one thing, one person—but I didn’t know I was giving him up at the time.

  No, no, no!

  The past’s tugging at me more and more, and I don’t seem able to push it away so easy. Control, Gracie. But I’m not feeling good, and I think it’s gonna rain. Another night in my hidey-hole with the rain beating down, trying not to remember the good times. The high times. The times when—

  No.

  Cecily

  What a joke my life is. Three thanks-but-no-thanks letters from agents I’d hoped would represent me, and I can’t even get the Gracie project off the ground. The book I checked out of the library was about as helpful—as my father used to say—as tits on a billygoat. Not that it wasn’t informative and thorough. Gracie’s just not a good subject for that kind of investigation.

  I tried using the data sheet in the appendix. Space at the top for name: Gracie. Also known as: ? Last known address: Oroville, California—but that was more than ten years ago. Last known phone number: ? Automobiles owned, police record, birth date, Social Security number, real estate owned, driver’s license number, profession, children, relatives, spouse: all blank. Height: five feet six, give or take. Weight: too damn thin. Present location: divides time between postal storage box 27368 and hidey-hole, location unknown.

  Some detective, me.

  Give it up, Cecily. Give it up and get on with your life. Take yourself downtown to the temp agency and sign on for a three-month job before your cash all flows out. Better yet, get yourself a real, permanent job and give up your stupid dreams. They aren’t going to happen.

  But they might. Wasn’t I always one of the lucky ones? Besides, they tell you that all it takes is one editor who likes your work. They tell you all it takes is keeping at it. A page a day, and in a year you’ll have a novel. One more submission, and soon you’ll see your name on a book jacket. And there’s always the next manuscript. This Gracie would make one hell of a character, might even make the basis for a good novel. If only I could find out …

  The cart. Bet there’s something in that damned cart that she guards so carefully. Tomorrow I think I’ll try to befriend Gracie.

  Gracie

  Feeling real
bad today, even my pigeons sense it and leave me alone. That red-haired woman’s been sneaking around. This morning she brought me a bagel slathered in cream cheese just the way I like them. I left the bagel for the pigeons, fed the cream cheese to a stray cat. I know a bribe when I see one.

  Bribes. There were plenty: a new car if you’re a good girl. A new house, too, if you cooperate. And there was the biggest bribe of all, the one they never came through with.…

  No.

  Funny, things keep misting over today, and I’m not even crying. Haven’t cried for years. No, this reminds me more of the smoky neon haze and the flashing lights. The sea of faces that I couldn’t pick a single individual out of. Smoky sea of faces, but it didn’t matter. The one I wanted to see wasn’t there.

  Bribes, yeah. Lies, really. We’ll make sure everything’s worked out. Trust us. It’s taking longer than we thought He’s making it difficult. Be patient. And by the way, we’re not too sure about this new material.

  Bribes …

  The wall between me and the things on my list of what not to remember is crumbling. Where’s my control? That wall’s my last defense.…

  Cecily

  Deirdre’s worried about Grade. She’s looking worse than usual and has been refusing food. She fed the bagel I brought her to the pigeons, even though Del at Gino’s said bagels with cream cheese are one of her favorite things. Deirdre thinks we should do something—but what?

  Notify her family? Not possible. Take her to a hospital? She’s not likely to have health insurance. I suppose there’s always a free clinic, but would she agree to go? I doubt it. There’s no doubt she’s shutting out the world, though. She barely acknowledges anyone.

  I think I’ll follow her to her hidey-hole tonight. We ought to know where it is, in case she gets seriously ill. Besides, maybe there’s a clue to who she is secreted there.