Amber Dee's Missing Toe

by Matt Ferraz

  Shaw went silent. “You think he’s involved,” he said at last.

  “Well, it wouldn’t be hard for a doctor to give himself a small dose of poison – not enough to kill himself, but enough to make it look like that was the intention.”

  “This would be too dangerous, surely?” said Shaw.

  “Not with your men around,” said Grandma Bertha. “If I’m right, Dr Balsam did this to avoid suspicion, but it could have backfired. I don’t like him, Inspector. I had a strange feeling the moment I met him. He could be involved.”

  “I think it’s worth a try,” said Inspector Shaw. “Anything else?”

  “What about those selfies?” she asked. “Have you got them for me?”

  “That’s easier said than done,” complained Inspector Shaw. “We can’t track down everyone who was around at the time. Our best shot is finding people who go there every day.”

  “You can do this,” she said.

  “Well, I’ll call you in a few hours,” said the inspector.

  “I might not be at home,” she said. “There are just three days to Christmas, Inspector, and I need to do some shopping.”

  “Shop safely, then,” he replied. “Try not to find any dead bodies. We have enough already.”

  “I make no promises,” she said with a laugh, and hung up.

  She examined her notes in silence. Winifred tried to take a peek at them, but Grandma Bertha’s handwriting was barely legible.

  “Are we really going shopping?” Winifred asked.

  “No,” said Grandma Bertha. “There are a couple of things we need to find out before we crack the case.”

  Winifred raised her eyebrows. “Do you know who did it, Grandma Bertha?”

  “The problem here isn’t who,” she said. “We need to find out why and how. Remember what I said about the letter you found at Dana’s place? That it was like a puzzle with extra pieces? That’s what this whole case feels like. Everything seems to fall into place – then we find out there are still some pieces left.”

  “How are we going to deal with that?”

  Grandma Bertha scratched her chin. “The only answer is that these pieces belong to a totally different puzzle. And we’ll need to complete that one too if we want to know why Amber and her mother were killed.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Grandma Bertha is Triumphant

  It was late in the afternoon. They’d been discussing the case for hours. Grandma Bertha still wanted to solve the case before Lydia’s party. Winifred ordered food and made strong coffee while Grandma Bertha walked around the apartment, followed by her dogs, trying to look at the case from every possible angle. She still wore her Santa Claus hat.

  “Do you still suspect Dr Balsam?” Winifred asked at one point.

  Grandma Bertha nodded. “I know that a bad first impression doesn’t mean he’s guilty. But there’s no way the killer could have given him the poison. He must have taken it himself.”

  “But why?” asked Winifred. “Do you think he was waiting outside the apartment building to pick Jeannie up?”

  Grandma Bertha poured coffee into a mug. “It’s strange that a renowned doctor would do business with low life,” she said. “But bear in mind that he wasn’t always a renowned doctor. Once upon a time, he was a young medical student in need of money. The friendships he made at that time in his life could have followed him throughout his life.”

  “A few hours ago, you were sure that Jeannie had been expecting Balsam at Dana’s home,” said Winifred. “As soon as he was poisoned, you abandoned that idea and decided he was one of the bad guys. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “I know,” said Grandma Bertha, sitting down on the couch. “I’m trying to consider all possibilities.”

  Winifred yawned. “What’s the extra piece of the puzzle then?”

  “We’re not just looking for a murderer,” said Grandma Bertha, raising her index finger. “There’s another crime here – a much older crime.”

  “The kidnapping of baby Amber?” said Winifred.

  “It should be the answer to all of our questions, shouldn’t it?” said Grandma Bertha. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?” asked Winifred.

  “The mirrors!” replied Grandma Bertha. “There were mirrors all around the shop!”

  “Yes, and?” asked Winifred.

  “And you said that woman’s pinkie finger looked strange. It looked too big, you said. That, or…” Grandma Bertha pulled the Santa Claus hat from her head and went to the Christmas tree. “I need you to give me a minute,” she said, picking ornaments off the tree and putting them in the hat. “I’m going to my room. Stay here and do something to pass the time. I’ll be about an hour.”

  Winifred was speechless. Grandma Bertha left the room. Winifred looked at the dogs, who seemed as puzzled as she was. “We never know what’s going on in her head, do we?” she said. The dogs wagged their tails.

  She finished her coffee and turned on the television. Home Alone 2 was on. The movie had already started, but Winifred decided it was better than staring at the blank walls. She could hear Grandma Bertha making a noise inside her room, and wondered what she could be doing in there.

  The film continued. Macaulay Culkin talked to the old lady in the park, and she took him to watch a concert. They became good friends. Winifred had seen the movie several times, but she never remembered what happened in it. The only scenes she recalled were the violent ones, in which the criminals stepped barefoot on nails, got their heads burned by blow torches and fell from buildings. She had so much fun enjoying the slapstick that she forgot the movie also had tender scenes.

  Then the phone rang.

  “Hello?” said Winifred.

  “Miss Compson,” said Shaw. “Can I talk to Bertha?”

  “She’s busy. She’s asked me not to bother her,” said Winifred.

  “I’m listening.” It was Grandma Bertha’s voice. “There’s a phone extension in my room. I’m trying to restage the crime scene with these Christmas ornaments and a few mirrors. But, please, keep talking.”

  Shaw took a deep breath. “All right, then,” he said. “I think you’ll want to know that Dr Balsam has just passed away.”

  “Oh my God!” said Winifred.

  “Was it the poison?” asked Grandma Bertha.

  “Yes, it was. At first they thought he was going to be fine. Then he woke up and started mumbling. We could hardly understand what he was saying. They tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late. If he had intended to only take a small dose, he could have calculated it better.”

  “That is, if he’s the one who administered the poison,” Winifred reminded them.

  “It was him, we know that now,” said Shaw. “The vitamin pill story didn’t convince anyone, and he finally confessed. He said he felt guilty for ‘bringing those two back to them’. Then he died.”

  Winifred’s hands were shaking. “You think he meant Jeannie and the other person? The one who picked her up outside Dana’s apartment?”

  “Did he say anything else?” asked Grandma Bertha. “Anything at all?”

  “He did say something about a daughter,” said Shaw. “‘Our daughter’. Which is strange, since he didn’t have children of his own.”

  “Maybe the daughter did it,” proposed Winifred. “A bastard daughter who felt jealous, or something.”

  “The extra puzzle,” said Grandma Bertha. “A whole story we haven’t even begun to explore yet. What about the selfies, Inspector?”

  “We have news on that front too,” said Shaw. “Turns out you were right again. I ordered a couple of men to ask for photos from people who were there. It was highly unorthodox, but guess what? They think they’ve found the person you were looking for. It’s a woman, not wearing a coat, and she looks a lot like Amber.”

  To their surprise, Grandma Bertha’s answer was a loud laugh. “Finally!” she said. “Come over to see me right now, Inspector. Bring the selfies with you. If they are what I t
hink they are, I’ll be able to tell you who killed Amber and her mother.”

  Grandma Bertha hung up. Winifred stood there, holding the phone, not knowing what to say. The old lady came into the living room, took the phone from the girl’s hand and hung it up.

  “What’s going on?” asked Winifred.

  “Come here a second,” said Grandma Bertha, pulling her from the room. Inside the old lady’s room, right next to her bed, lay a plastic gingerbread man, face down. A little Santa Claus stood behind him. It took Winifred a minute to realize that they represented Amber’s corpse and her killer, and that Grandma Bertha had re-created the crime scene using a box of matches as the counter and pieces of tissue as the clothes on display at the store. “The most important thing is the mirrors,” said the old lady. There were three small mirrors representing the ones they had seen at the crime scene.

  “And who is Santa Claus?” asked Winifred.

  “The person we never met,” said Grandma Bertha. “The reason I had déjà vu. Amber’s sister.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Full Picture

  “This was an unusual case from the beginning,” said Grandma Bertha to Winifred, Inspector Shaw and Mr Hanks, who had come round to borrow some sugar. “A young woman is murdered at her workplace, in broad daylight. She’s an ordinary woman, apart from having a minor physical handicap. But it soon became clear that there were more layers to this.” She sighed. “We were all looking for suspects among the people we knew. Dana Dee seemed like a normal woman, but she had some skeletons in her closet. Dr Balsam, the physician who had looked after Amber all her life, and who had been responsible for her finding a home after she was abandoned, was my prime suspect. And of course, Jeannie, the woman who we know killed Dana and tried to kill Winifred.

  “At one point, I remember saying that there were too many pieces to this puzzle – pieces that might belong to another puzzle entirely. The letters that Amber mailed to herself and to someone else. The pills she took before she was killed. The strange way she died – without fighting back, without resisting. And now we have the photos of this young woman you have brought to me, Inspector. A young woman out without a coat in winter. A young woman who, apart from her haircut, looks a lot like her non-identical twin sister.”

  The inspector opened his mouth to say something, but Grandma Bertha gestured for him to let her continue. “I’ll tell you what I think happened,” she said. “And, as usual, there are gaps between the facts. I’m going to fill these gaps with what I think is the truth. You don’t have to agree with everything I say. But as usual, I believe you’ll see I’m mostly right.

  “The first thing to consider,” she went on, “is the unusual way Dana and her husband adopted little Amber. I never bought that story. A young doctor admits a baby patient with a missing toe and no parents, and decides to hand her to a couple of friends who want to have a child but can’t? It sounded way too melodramatic for me. It didn’t convince me. I have a theory. What if Dr Balsam wasn’t just the doctor who found the baby girl… What if he was her father? What if he wanted to find a new home for his girl – somewhere he’d be able to keep an eye on her for the rest of her life?”

  “Why on earth would he do that?” asked Shaw.

  “There are a few possible reasons,” explained Grandma Bertha. “Dr Balsam never married, but maybe he had an affair with one of his patients. If she was married, or a minor, he could have faced serious penalties, and could even have lost his licence to practise medicine. The missing toe intrigued me. At first, I thought baby Amber had been kidnapped and had her toe chopped off to send a message to her parents. But now I believe there was something about her toe that could connect her to her mother. Amber suffered from polydactyly, a condition where people are born with extra toes or fingers. She was born with six toes. Dr Balsam decided to remove it surgically – so she wouldn’t know she was adopted. He was a young general practitioner, not a surgeon. He was afraid someone would see the scar, so he decided to remove the whole toe to avoid suspicion.”

  It was Winifred’s turn to question her: “Even if all of that is true, why was Amber killed?”

  “Because Dr Balsam and his mistress had twins,” said Grandma Bertha, raising her index finger. “That’s why I had déjà vu: this case reminded me of another case I solved that involved twins. Winifred’s case!”

  Winifred was shocked. “What are the chances of that happening again?”

  “I felt the same way,” said Grandma Bertha. “What are the chances? That’s why it took me so long to solve this case: I couldn’t believe it was all about twins again. It was only when I got over that that things made sense. So, we have two girls. One of them, Amber, was sent to a lovely home where she lived a normal childhood. But the other baby, let’s call her Cathy, wasn’t so lucky.”

  “Where is all of this coming from?” asked Shaw.

  “Look at the pictures, Inspector!” she said. “Can you deny that this young woman looks a lot like Amber, and they were about the same age?”

  Shaw shrugged. “It’s still quite a stretch.”

  “Pretend I’m right for a second,” said Grandma Bertha. “Dr Balsam arranges for Cathy’s adoption, the same way he arranged for Amber’s. He finds a couple he thinks he can trust. Instead, they are abusive parents. They move away from town and don’t keep in touch with Dr Balsam. He feels he’s failed his daughter, but he still has Amber to look after. We don’t know what Cathy went through. All we know is, one afternoon in December, she comes into Amber’s shop and sees her.”

  Winifred wiped a tear from her face. “She sees Amber’s face and her own in the mirror. They’re non-identical twins, but the likeness is undeniable.”

  “Exactly,” said Grandma Bertha. “They start to exchange letters. Amber writes nice ones to her sister and nasty ones that she mails to herself. She wants her mother to find them. She wants to know the truth, and she thinks the letters will prompt her mother to tell the truth.”

  “Then why did Cathy walk into the store without a coat?” asked the inspector. “And who was Jeannie?”

  Grandma Bertha raised her index finger higher. “The answer to the first question is simple. Cathy is used to seeing Scotty in the shop every time she goes there. Scotty isn’t the smartest boy in the class, and he doesn’t notice how similar they were. To him, Cathy is just a returning customer. Cathy has no way of knowing Scotty isn’t working that day. She tosses her jacket off so she’ll have an excuse to return to the shop and buy a new one. She walks in and finds Amber on the floor.”

  “What?” the three of them yelled in unison.

  “She’s not dead,” explained Grandma Bertha. “But she’s taken an overdose and needs medical attention. She doesn’t want it, though. She’s just had a visit from Jeannie, and heard some terrible things. She no longer wants to live.”

  Mr Hanks raised his hand. “Wasn’t she stabbed?” he asked.

  “As she lay on the floor,” Grandma Bertha said. “Cathy picked up the scissors from the counter and stabbed her once. She wanted it to look like a murder scene, not a suicide – because she wanted the police to go after the people who had made Amber want to die. Dr Balsam and Jeannie – the woman who gave birth to them. She had six fingers on her left hand, you see, and she passed that genetic condition on to Amber and Cathy.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Christmas at Lydia’s

  The first jug of tea came out too strong, so Lydia added some water to it and put it in the fridge. Her guests would arrive at any time. Hosting always made her nervous. Her sister had called at the last minute, saying she couldn’t come. Todd had some friends from work coming by, but they had cancelled too. Stu hadn’t invited anyone. It made her sad when she thought of his difficulty in making friends. He was entering puberty now, a tough phase for any kid, and being lonely didn’t make it any easier.

  Stu sat on the couch, staring at the door. Lydia wanted to tell him to take it easy, to watch something on TV or play a ga
me on his mobile phone. “I want to be here when Grandma Bertha arrives,” he said, and nobody could dissuade him.

  Grandma Bertha was on the news again. The Homicide Magnet, as they used to call her, had helped the police to catch another criminal. This time, it was a woman who had led her own daughter to suicide. The woman had extended her revenge to the girl’s adoptive mother – and had tried to kill Winifred Compson in the process. A well-known local doctor had killed himself in the meantime, unable to cope with his guilt. What a mess!

  The papers asked Grandma Bertha how she had reached her conclusions, and her answer was always the same. “I watch a lot of movies, and have quite an imagination. That, and I know a thing or two about human nature.” She didn’t mention the collecting of evidence and the long hours of reflection that Lydia knew were a crucial part of the process. She wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating Grandma Bertha’s mind again. That didn’t mean she had to like her, though.

  “Grandma!” Stu yelled from the living room.

  “Stu, my boy!” said Grandma Bertha. “When did you grow up so much?”

  Lydia went to the living room. She saw that Grandma Bertha had brought presents in a red bag, and that she wasn’t alone. The dogs were with her, of course, and so were Winifred Compson and a man Lydia knew. “Inspector Shaw!” she said. “What a surprise!”

  “I hope I’m not intruding,” said the inspector.

  “Not at all,” said Lydia.

  “Sorry for not telling you before, Lyd,” said Grandma Bertha, putting the bag under the Christmas tree. “The inspector got divorced last month, and had nowhere to spend Christmas.”

  “It’s all right,” said Lydia. “Todd’s gone out but he’ll be back soon.”

  “We met him outside,” said Grandma Bertha. “He’s helping Mr Hanks to park the van.”

  “Mr who?” asked Lydia.

  “My neighbour,” explained Grandma Bertha. “Winifred didn’t want me to drive.”