Dames Fight Harder

by M. Ruth Myers

  “Or giggling.” Freeze came through the door and tossed his hat on his desk. “When she’s not crying, she does that. Get anything, Boike?”

  “Not that we didn’t get last time. Just asking if Foster had gotten any strange phone calls or had differences with anyone made her dissolve.”

  I’d never heard them talk so openly about someone on the periphery of one of their cases, let alone with such disgust.

  “Are you sure Mrs. Foster’s not just a good actress?” I asked.

  Freeze snorted.

  “The dame’s too dizzy to think about anything but clothes and wallpaper. Nothing sticks in her head long enough to even come up with the idea of killing her husband, let alone hire someone.”

  I wasn’t so sure. A dainty little vision of an adoring wife had almost killed me once.

  “You finding anything?” Freeze asked me, indicating the boxes.

  “Not yet.”

  He tilted his head at Boike. “Let’s go eat.”

  ***

  Around two o’clock that afternoon, I found what I’d been looking for.

  At any rate I came across a crumb that drew my attention enough to make me pause. Near the top of the third box, among other checks, was one Foster hadn’t cashed. It was stapled to a blank sheet of paper and made out for the not insubstantial sum of fifty dollars. It was from Win Lamont.

  Leaning back in my chair, I blinked my eyes to try and summon moisture back into them. I wanted to make sure I was seeing correctly.

  The check had been drawn on Lamont’s personal account, not the one for his business. It was made out to Foster personally as well. Whatever the check had been for, it didn’t appear to be a business transaction. Yet Lamont had explicitly told me his only connection with Foster was through business and that they didn’t socialize.

  Most likely there was an innocent explanation for the payment, but I couldn’t think of one. A hefty contribution for some charity? If the check were made out by Rachel, or even Phil Clark or Oscar Jones, I might buy that explanation, but Lamont didn’t seem like the type. Especially the way he’d grumbled about hard times the last few years. The overriding question, however, was why it hadn’t been cashed.

  Fifty dollars wasn’t chicken feed. Given that the minimum wage was thirty cents an hour, it would cover a month’s rent on a nice apartment like Gloria’s with money left over.

  I’d been working my way back through the financial documents. Now, quickly, I went through the ones for the previous two months. It was new territory. Nothing further jumped out at me there.

  I looked at the date on the check and noted it on my notepad. Using it as the pivot point, I went forward again. Roughly five weeks after the check had been written was when Foster had signed the lease on his love nest for Gloria. It was also around the time his bank account began to have more money in it.

  Had Foster needed a loan for some kind of investment? For some undertaking on the side, maybe? If so, it didn’t seem logical that he’d ask for one of that size from someone he didn’t know outside of business. Why not just go to a bank? And again, if he’d needed money, why had the check remained uncashed?

  I went back for a more orderly plod through the two months prior to the check. No invoices hinted at unexpected expenses. No fifty dollar expense was evident in Foster’s business or personal accounts. The only thing I could see that had changed was that right about the time Lamont wrote the check to Foster, Foster’s fortunes had taken a turn for the better. Right up until he got a bullet in his head.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Standing on the doorstep of the Minsky house that afternoon, I had a new understanding of what young men must experience as they faced initial inspection by the family of a girl they wanted to court. I’d put on my good suit and silk blouse and the strand of pearls my dad had given me for high school graduation. Rachel greeted me with a hug and a peck on the cheek, something we didn’t usually do, or ever do for that matter.

  A woman with a firm chin and steel gray hair done in an impeccable French twist stepped forward and offered her hand.

  “Miss Sullivan, I’m Miriam Minsky, Rachel’s mother.”

  “Maggie, please. How nice to meet you.”

  She led the way into a parlor considerably larger than the one where Rachel and I had talked on my previous visit. She introduced me to the three women arrayed there. One had wavy red hair and wore too much jewelry. One was determinedly plain with her victory roll, shapeless navy dress and absence of makeup. The third, who wore a smart sailor dress and had a gleaming cap of black hair, was called Mo. They were Rachel’s sisters-in-law.

  Silence thundered around us. They studied me with polite but uncertain curiosity.

  “Rachel says you used to work for the Rikes. In their store,” said the one called Mo after several awkward seconds had passed. “That must have been interesting.”

  “We generally shop at Beerman’s,” the redhead noted.

  “How do you manage to watch what’s going on in such a large area?” Mo asked.

  I appreciated their attempts at conversation, stilted as they were. I tried to hold up my end with my responses. Rachel sat clasping her hands together as tightly as they’d gripped the bars of her jail cell. Her eyes whipped from speaker to speaker, and occasionally darted a glance at her mother.

  Meanwhile Mrs. Minsky poured coffee from a silver pot that would have challenged the muscles of some of the men at Rachel’s site. She was taller than Rachel, and well preserved for her age, but the flesh around her mouth was taut with worry. When she’d passed around a plate of coconut macaroons she cleared her throat, bringing conversation that had become more relaxed to an end.

  “I’m afraid we’re a bit short on time today,” she apologized. “We’re preparing for a religious observance. We understand you think talking to us might somehow help you prove Rachel’s innocence? Perhaps we should start.”

  “Joel said we might think some of your questions insulting.” The one without makeup spoke softly. Her voice was lovely. I had the impression she was Joel’s wife.

  “I’m not going to ask if any of you are hiding a past as a gun moll, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  The redhead giggled. She smothered it at a look from her mother-in-law. Mrs. Minsky nodded at me.

  “Ask whatever you need to.”

  “We want to help Rachel. All of us,” Mo said.

  Joel Minsky underestimated the womenfolk in his family, I thought. I set my coffee cup aside.

  “What I’m hoping is that one of you may remember something out of the ordinary these last three months or so. Even the smallest thing. A phone call where someone hangs up when you answer. Someone you met who asked a lot of questions related to Rachel. Perhaps one of your husbands mentioned someone angry over a business matter. Things like that.”

  Rachel’s mother fingered a double strand of gray pearls circling her neck. If they were real, as I suspected, they were impressively large.

  “You think this might be because of someone else in our family rather than Rachel?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think anything. I’m looking for what I might not have considered. There are things — a lot of things — about this that don’t add up.”

  The women looked at one another. No one averted her gaze. No one appeared uneasy.

  “My husband makes a lot of enemies, I’m sure. Because of his work,” his wife said softly. “He’s never mentioned anything, but...”

  “We’ve already talked about it. He had a man in his firm look into it.”

  They sat thinking. Mrs. Minsky stirred, preparing to rise.

  “If anything does occur to us—”

  “Wait.” Mo held up a hand. “It’s a small thing, but it was odd.” She looked at her mother-in-law. “That night I was over here so you could help me undo the mess I’d made with my cross-stitch. The phone call. Remember?”

  The older woman frowned. “Faintly. Something about the philharmonic?”
/>   “Philharmonic?” echoed Rachel.

  “I teased you about it next day, about who was your mystery man.” Mo addressed me now. “Mama had her big glasses on and strands of yard twisted around her fingers from the stitches she was picking out. The phone rang and I said I’d answer it. A man asked if Rachel had left for the philharmonic yet, that he was supposed to meet her there, but she hadn’t shown up.

  “I said she’d already gone and offered to take a message. But he said, ‘Oh, here she is,’ and hung up the phone.”

  Rachel had started to nod.

  “When you kidded me, I told you the only person I was supposed to meet that night was Cassie Kline.”

  The others seemed to know who that was.

  “When was this?” I asked.

  She thought for a minute.

  “Not this last time. It must have been the time before, so a couple of months.”

  Mo tried, but couldn’t remember any more details. At an undetectable signal from Mrs. Minsky, the three younger women said goodby and returned to the kitchen. I heard excited murmuring as they compared notes.

  Mrs. Minsky, smiling slightly, watched until they were gone. Then she turned to me. “Good women, all of them, but so is my Rachel. Rachel is my treasure.”

  Her daughter shot a startled look in her direction.

  ***

  “Who would have thought my own mother could amaze me?” Rachel flounced onto the rose colored sofa in the small parlor across from the one we’d been in. She extracted a pack of cigarettes wedged between cushion and arm.

  “They care about you, Rachel. All of them do.” In the beginning I’d wondered about it. Now I didn’t.

  “Yeah, I know. I want to think the worst of them because they treat me like a prisoner, even though I know they have to. I resent the fact I’m in this mess, and I turn it on them.”

  “I could lend you a rosary if you want to keep confessing sins. I’m pretty sure I still have one somewhere.”

  She gave me a hard look, then grinned. Taking a drag or two on her cigarette had improved her mood.

  “That phone call Mo mentioned, did that come before or after your earring went missing?”

  “Don’t know. I’m not exactly sure when I noticed about the earring. I went to put them on one day and one wasn’t there.”

  “When you started to put them on.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not when you went to put them away?”

  “No. Why...? Ah.” She sat up, shrewd and alert like the old Rachel. “You’re thinking that means it didn’t fall out of my ear?”

  “Exactly. Somebody took one out of your jewelry box, or wherever you keep them. If someone established that you were tucked away at a concert for a couple of hours, they’d have plenty of time. If they could get in.”

  She made a sound of annoyance. “Which they probably could. The cleaning people open the window at the end of the hall to air things out while they’re cleaning there. They forget to lock it again more often than not. I’ve heard the supervisor chewing them out about it a time or two. The window opens onto the fire escape.”

  I digested that. “They’d still need a key to get into your apartment. Did anyone else have a key?”

  Her head shook insistently. “No.”

  “But you have a spare?”

  “Yes.”

  “And keep it where?”

  “In a dish on the kitchenette table. The police took it though. Joel said.”

  Up until which time anyone could have taken it, had a copy made, and returned it.

  “Joel said you had some lists or something you wanted me to explain.”

  “Just look at mostly, to see if anything useful pops out.

  “Did Winfred Lamont have any kind of business arrangement with Foster that you know about?”

  “No, why?”

  “Can you think of any other reason Lamont would have written Foster a check for fifty dollars?”

  “Fifty dollars! When?”

  I told her what I’d learned and showed her the lists I’d worked up on Foster’s finances.

  “So about the time he got that check, his bank account began to look rosier.” She frowned in thought at my handwritten pages.

  “Did he start any sort of sideline that you know of? Sell off something Lamont might have wanted?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “Not that I’ve heard of, but men get together sometimes, for drinks or golf and such. Needless to say, I’m not invited. Still, if Foster had launched some new venture, I think I would have picked up at least a hint. As to selling something to Lamont, I don’t know what it would be. Foster didn’t have any sort of equipment; he sub-contracted. A used truck possibly. Or a bribe?”

  “It wouldn’t be very smart writing a check for a bribe.” Then again, crooks weren’t always smart.

  “If Foster was starting some sort of sideline, I suppose it could be earnest money he required from Lamont for a buy in,” Rachel said slowly. “Good faith money put up with the understanding Foster wouldn’t cash the check until whatever the sideline was began to pay out.”

  Something had begun to pay out to Foster, but not, by all appearances, to Lamont. Putting aside that line of exploration with some reluctance, I handed Rachel the lists from Cecilia. She studied them, muttering occasionally, but saw nothing of interest there. When she handed them back I gathered myself for what had to come next.

  Rachel exhaled a stream of smoke, watching me.

  “I’m guessing there’s something more you want to ask.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Foster had started a rumor about you?”

  Her dark head gave an insolent toss.

  “Figured I’d see how good a detective you are.”

  “Dammit, Rachel—”

  “Yes, dammit! Do you suppose I like this? Do you suppose I like having my private life pawed at and picked at for the whole city to see? Do you think I like knowing that if you can’t pull a rabbit out of some hat, my backside’s going to sizzle in the electric chair, and that if you do—” Her voice cracked. “—if you do, there’ll still be such a cloud over my name that I’ll probably never get a chance to so much as bid on another contract?

  “Oh, and just for the record — before he started the rumor, Foster propositioned me and I turned him down.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  The more I thought about it, the less outlandish it seemed that the check from Lamont might represent some kind of bribe. He hadn’t gotten much in return if he was telling the truth about the precarious state of his finances. Bribing Foster would, however, go a long way toward explaining his nervousness.

  Before I wasted time on a theory that might be inaccurate, I needed to put out some feelers. The men-only gossip circuit which Rachel had mentioned, and which I knew existed in business and just every other aspect of life, seemed like the place to start.

  “I regret to say I’ve got a pretty full schedule all day today,” Phil Clark apologized when I reached him Thursday morning.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I’m driving down to Middletown, and I can’t say precisely when I’ll be back. I take it this additional information you mentioned isn’t something you want to discuss over the phone.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  He was silent a moment.

  “Look, I’ll tell you what. Your place of business is downtown as I recall?”

  “Between Patterson and St. Clair, yes.”

  “I often duck home at midday and take my dog for a run. I could do that along the river in front of the Engineers Club if you wanted to talk with me while we walked.”

  “I’d be glad to, and thanks.”

  Oscar Jones, the sad sack builder who’d also been an unsuccessful bidder for Foster’s project, had never heard of Foster having any sort of sideline project when I talked to him.

  “But why would he and Win Lamont do something together? They were both doing very well by themselves,” he asked in bewilderm
ent.

  I hadn’t told him about the check, just that I’d come across something suggesting they’d had private dealings. He nodded and looked as blank as if I’d been speaking Romanian.

  On my way back, I detoured to stop by Gloria’s building and see whether any mail had come for her in her absence. Just some magazines she subscribed to, the super told me. His missus had looked at them and then thrown them out.

  “If I don’t hear from her by next week, I’m going to box up what’s left of her things and advertise her apartment.”

  “Didn’t she have a lease on the place?”

  “When the rent comes due, if it’s not paid, the lease is up as far as I’m concerned. I had to pull up three boards and replace them because of that milk soaking into them, not to mention repainting that wall that got blood on it. I’m not going to be out any more money because of her. I was nice to her, looked the other way about a gentleman paying the rent because, well, a girl on her own’s got it hard, doesn’t she?”

  His wife, who was on her hands and knees scrubbing baseboards, looked up and gave him a glare.

  ***

  Late morning was a slow time for peddling newspapers. In my book that made it a dandy time for having a follow-up chat with the disagreeable young wiseguy who’d helped himself to Heebs’s corner.

  “Hi,” I said with a big smile. “Remember me? The first of the week I asked you where Heebs was. You said you didn’t know.”

  “So?”

  I snatched a folded paper from the bag slung across his chest and gave his shoulder a smack with it.

  “Hey!”

  I shoved the paper back at him so forcefully he had to backpedal in order to take it.

  “So either you’re the dumbest newsboy in the city or you’re such a sneak the others don’t have anything to do with you. Every other newsie in the city knew Heebs had been beaten up. In fact he was in the hospital, but he’s out now, and when he’s ready to sell papers again, you’re going to let him have this corner back. Period.”