The Viola Brothers Shore Mystery

by Viola Brothers Shore

“You have a lovely home, Mrs. Zwilling.” (The corner druggist had told an inquiring stranger that Mrs. Brunnhilde Zwilling owned it free and clear.)

  “Oh, thank you, it’s small but whatever is in it is good. Too many people are all show on the outside, Mr. Mayer. Oben hui, Unten pfui.”

  He smiled appreciatively, “Modesty is good, but from your letter I did not expect you would be so attractive, dear lady.”

  “I always say if you don’t wear everything on your sleeve, people will be happy to get more than they expected.” It wouldn’t hurt if he saw she was no fool. “I believe in keeping things in the bank, Mr. Mayer, and not only money—although Mr. Zwilling, may he rest in peace, left me well provided. But if I’m a good cook, my knoedel will say it better than me.”

  “It is like a dream,” he murmured, and there can be no doubt of his sincerity. Finally he sighed, “Loneliness is a terrible thing, dear lady.”

  The lady agreed, and said she had made up her mind, if she could meet the right kind of man—

  “That is what we are here to find out, dear lady. We are not children—” He broke off to inquire whether Mrs. Zwilling had any children.

  “Only a married stepdaughter in Tchicago.” The answer seemed to please him. “I myself was not so blessed.”

  “Blessed or cursed, Mrs. Zwilling? To have them and lose them—!” She asked a muted question and his answer came in accents of controlled grief, out of his averted face. “A little girl of five. Burned to death. My wife too—”

  And ever since, he had wandered over the face of the earth.

  She listened raptly as he described the cities he had seen. “You bring a breath of the whole world into this little room!” Mr. Zwilling, it appeared, had been a conservative man—a stick-to-what-you-have man. Every Tuesday he wanted the same gedaempfte rindebrust and every Thursday, zwetchken knoedel. A woman wants her cooking appreciated but—“I have always longed to see something of the world.”

  He shook his head philosophically. “That’s life, dear lady. The person in the little house watches the trains go by. The one on the train watches the little houses go by.” For years he had looked with envy at the home cooking on his friends’ tables. It was at a friend’s home that he had picked up the Neue Post and three little lines jumped out of the page. Three lines might change a man’s fate!

  The dear lady leaned forward in her chair. “You mean my—ad?”

  He meant her loneliness crying out to his. “Do you believe in Fate, Mrs. Zwilling?”

  Well, as a rule, she believed more in going after what you want. But maybe he was right. She wouldn’t argue with him. Or he with her, it seemed. About anything.

  The mounting crescendo of their harmony was jarred by three sharp rings on the back doorbell. Mr. Mayer started up. “Who’s that?”

  She hastened to reassure him. “Some neighbors saw a light, I suppose. I won’t answer. You were saying?”

  He seemed to have lost the thread. “Promise me, dear lady, that whatever passes between us remains between us. People laugh at lonely hearts.”

  What woman could refuse such a promise? “Why should I take the whole world in my confidence?” she inquired, and led the way into the dining room. It was not an outright lie, since one confidante, who had helped her compose the ad, was not the whole world. “Only a little snack,” she explained modestly, putting a match to the gleaming candle sticks set on the real lace doilies, while her guest’s eye traveled avidly over the canapes, the salad, the home-baked mohn brodchen, the kugelhupf.

  And not only his eyes. “No—no more, dear lady, really, I am bursting. And not with food alone. With happiness. With hope—with—with—”

  But he rose without saying with what else.

  Her disappointment was obvious. “You’re not running away, Mr. Mayer?”

  If he stayed he would be pressing her, and she must feel absolutely sure she was acting of her own free will. Also, he must bring proof of his financial standing and his character. And also, she might not be willing to give up her charming home.

  “Give it up?” Her warm brown eyes grew round.

  Only for a different one, no more charming, a little larger perhaps. He took out a worn and creased snapshot. “You’ve never been to California?”

  All her life she had wanted to see the garden spot of the world. “And your house is beautiful!”

  It had been beautiful, before the fire. And it would be again, and that was where he hoped to taste her zwetchken knoedel. They grew right in the patio, the zwetchken. And avocados! And figs! He must get estimates at once on restoring both house and garden. “May I call a cab to take me to the airport?”

  “The airport, Mr. Mayer? You’re going tonight?”

  “My plane leaves in an hour. I couldn’t resist seeing you first. And so I came, I saw, I was conquered!” But a man must attend to his affairs. Or how could he offer real security to a beautiful woman? And he must see his attorney so that, whatever happened, his home and investments would not go to distant cousins.

  If anything, her anxiety increased.

  “But where can I reach you?”

  “I will write from Los Angeles. If you are a little anxious, so much the better for me, dear lady.”

  “But—but—you come out of the blue and then you are gone! I must know where to find you!”

  “On your doorstep—one week from today. Don’t you trust me, dear lady?” He smiled his warm sweet smile, and she said that of course she trusted him. A man who offered so much and asked nothing in return. She too would see an attorney. Oh, no, not her regular attorney who was friendly with her stepdaughter and—Well, it was none of his business!

  Mr. Mayer kissed her hand and assured her that no affairs could keep him longer than a week. But on the way to the airport he ordered the cab to turn back, and to lose the small coupe which seemed to be following them. Mr. Mayer’s affairs—at least, his current ones—were apparently not in California at all. But an airmailed letter posted from there advised dear Mrs. Zwilling that one current deal was consummated profitably, that he had another pending, and would bring along estimates for the house, which was crying for a woman’s touch. Meanwhile, she might save time by getting her own affairs in order before the 24th.

  * * * *

  It was on the 24th that I received a call from Police Chief Petrie. “You asked me to keep an eye out for a certain matter? Well, it’s in my office now.”

  I hurried across the Square and found him with a weeping woman dressed in black. “Mrs. Mohr thinks her husband has been kidnapped,” said the Chief. I looked sharply from her plump form to her high cheekbones while she repeated, in a drained voice with a trace of German accent, how her bridegroom of two days had disappeared on the way to a furniture store.

  “Jules stopped for cigars and I went ahead. I waited and waited—”

  He would never have kept her waiting five minutes—he was so considerate. But she had waited all day—phoning everywhere—friends, hospitals, police. And so she knew only one thing could have happened. “Gangsters saw me give him the $1500 in the bank, to pay for the furniture, and they followed him—”

  “Your husband is a stocky man with a thick mustache?”

  She was pitiful in her desperate, trusting eagerness. “He shaved it off but—you know him, Mr. Daniels? You heard something?”

  “I’ve heard of your husband. Weren’t you pricing furniture on 5th Street?”

  A dull brick color came and went, leaving her face more deathly pale. “That was my sister. They were shopping for their—for his—Oh, my poor Pauline!” She dropped her head into her hands and I realized then that she was in mourning.

  “Your sister and your husband were shopping for whose home?” I asked sharply and had to strain for her answer. “He wasn’t my husband then. He was married to Pauline.”

  I am hardened to sordid
stories, but this one touched a new low. The widowed sisters had kept house together in the home of the younger one, Mathilde. Pauline, living on the bounty of Mathilde, had answered a Personal Ad in the Neue Post. And “God had brought her Jules Mohr, a well-fixed man who had lost his wife and child in a fire.” Mathilde wished that she, too, could find such a considerate companion, with such a sweet smile. But she was glad for Pauline—

  “She was always so proud, although mine was hers, and nobody knew. Even Jules didn’t know till after the wedding. Of course he has a much more beautiful home in California. Pauline couldn’t wait to be in her own—”

  She broke down completely. Poor Pauline never saw her new home. Right after the wedding dinner she was stricken with ptomaine—

  The Chief sat up abruptly and began to scribble his hieroglyphic notes.

  “The doctor did everything possible and Jules never left her bed. He was so good, so kind that I—I—”

  Before the funeral she had agreed to take her sister’s place. “It was God’s will, and Pauline would want the two who had loved her to console each other.” They had slipped out of town for the ceremony, because people wouldn’t understand how their grief had made them one! “But maybe I coveted my sister’s husband,” she sobbed, “and this is God’s punishment—”

  Petrie put a kindly hand on her bent shoulder. “Your sister had made out a will?”

  She nodded. “Jules made out his to her and she—there wasn’t much—”

  She raised her eyes and there was a different kind of fright in them and the beginning of a fearful question.

  “You didn’t make a will in his favor.” I didn’t ask it, I knew it.

  The panic in her eyes gave way to pleading. “Oh, no, you mustn’t think—If you only knew him!”

  We didn’t tell her how well we knew him. Or how lucky she was. She’d been through enough, and worse to come. Petrie promised, grimly, to find her husband. And when I left he was calling the Coroner.

  Hurrying across the Square I figured the chances of keeping the exhumation out of the papers until we could get our hands on Mr. Mohr-Meier. I even thought of the million-to-one chance that Mrs. Bendovid had run across his trail.

  She must have been startled at the warmth with which I dragged her out of a chair in the reception room and propelled her toward my office. I ate my crow quickly. “I hope you’re here to tell me something, but I want to tell you first that you were right and Steffie was right and I wish to God I hadn’t been such a mule. I could have saved a woman’s life.”

  “What woman, Donnie?”

  I told her briefly. “I know what that autopsy will show. And if I can lay my hands on him—if he hasn’t skipped out of town—”

  “Oh, no, Donnie. He couldn’t get away. Just bring along somebody with handcuffs.”

  I was slow to get her full meaning. “You know where he is right now?”

  “Not only where he is, but even what he’s dreaming. That Mrs. Zwilling will sell her house and—that’s where he is, at Mrs. Hilde Zwilling’s.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake why didn’t you say so!” I shouted to two of my men and we tore across the parking lot. “Where is this Mrs. Zwilling?”

  “Oh, she’s in Tchicago, but the house is on Maple Avenue. And don’t drive so crazy, he won’t get away.” She settled back against the seat, bracing her feet on the dashboard. I didn’t go through any red lights, but I wasn’t waiting for them to cool.

  “You see, Donnie, when you wouldn’t do anything, we put an ad in the Neue Post. We got seven answers! One was from John Mayer and that sounded close enough. In the drug store they told him Mrs. Zwilling is well fixed!, but they didn’t tell him she’s in Tchicago. So he came to see me. The mustache was gone but Steffie knew him.”

  “Steffie—?”

  “She helped me write the ad and she was hiding upstairs all the time. When she got a good look at him, she gave me the signal—three rings.”

  “She promised to let me know if you located him.”

  “But we didn’t. I couldn’t get his address and on the way to the airport, he gave her the slip. Although she drives very well for a beginner.

  “Donnie, darling. In Europe they lead partisans at sixteen. I was sure he was hooked—I made the bait so high—and I had a letter from California. Somebody out there must post them for him. And today he called up and I told him I’ll give him my answer with zwetchken knoedel. So he ate like a pig and I kept music playing, so he shouldn’t notice he was falling asleep from the dope in the brandy sauce. It was a good stiff dose. He never even moved when she tied him in the chair.”

  “Not Steffie!”

  “Who else? Who do you think is watching him now? Don’t worry so. (a) He’s doped; (b) he’s tied up, but good; (c) he’s locked in; and (d) she has your gun.”

  And that’s how we found my little girl, in Mrs. Zwilling’s foyer, her eyes as hard and bright as the steel of my Colt trained on the living room door. My men carried him out to the car and he never knew what hit him till he woke up in a cell. And meanwhile I had his Little Black Book.

  You all know about that Little Black Book and how many of the fifty entries were willing to come forward when the case broke. Willing and able. Among those whose tragedies went unheard was an unidentified entry on the first page—I. S. $1300. But we can identify Ilse Schaeffer who had been so good to a little girl that she could find no peace until Ilse Schaeffer was avenged. And the man who had taken such precautions never to be seen and recognized was trapped by one little-girl glimpse through a crack in a door. And so it was really Ilse Schaeffer who fingered him from her grave.

  He put on a great show in court, but the famous smile did not impress the housewives on the jury. It was said to be the best case ever built up by the County. But I am not too smug, knowing that the brightest jewel in my official crown was put there by the very mature young lady who is no longer my little girl and the unquenchably young old lady who is and is not my mother-in-law. God help the malefactor who is up against that combination!

  EVERYBODY’S NAME IS JONES

  Originally appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, March 1952.

  I don’t know what they’ll put on my tombstone when and if, but right now they could have been carving, Here lies Kate Levin—her name was not Jones. And for anybody that don’t remember the Jones yarn, it’s about a character sitting in a barber chair and somebody yells, “Jones’s barn is on fire!” and he jumps up and starts running till it suddenly hits him, “What am I running for? My name’s not Jones.”

  Well, that’s me and that’s my motto, up till the night of the big snow. It’s getting near to closing and Pop Kulic and me have The Hamburger Hut to ourselves, except for old Rubberface Scudder reading a New York paper that’s two weeks old. After being in the headlines all month, we’re three ghosts in a cemetery that the ghouls picked clean. And I’m not even enjoying the luxury of a cup of hot coffee while it’s hot because of mentally walking to my furnished room and a couple of hands reaching out from behind a tree—So when the door flicks open I jump. But only a middle-aged Sealskin blows off the bus. The whole air changes, there’s something human about her. “Go finish your coffee while it’s hot,” she says, shaking snow out of her hair which by now is something between a feather boa and steel wool.

  “Oh, that’s all right.” I got to be nineteen without people worrying about my coffee. “I can pour another cup.”

  “Make it two with Danish.” The way your grandma used to say, Two braids, Missy, and no nonsense about curls. “I’m being picked up here by my youngest granddaughter. Of course a perfect grandmother has no pets, but who’s perfect?”

  “How many you got?” Not giving a hoot, just making talk to shake the hands off my neck.

  “I never really counted. I collect them instead of Pineapple Glass. I’m Mrs. Fayga Bendovid, in case you coul
d use a Size 40, guaranteed not to shrink or run.”

  She has big cheekbones and a big mouth, only on her it’s becoming. But I’m not in the market for any more adopted relations. Not this year. Just the same, any company is better than Pop Kulic rubbing the chromium off the fixtures and Rubberface Scudder measuring you for a cemetery plot. I pour two cups and sit down. Maybe I’ll even bum a lift—

  “Ah—!” one coffee-sister to another. “Ah. I remember this coffee. And you too, with those fine fat braids. I was in here around Halloween with the same granddaughter. You must know her, Steffie Daniels?”

  I do a quick freeze because Daniels is the County Attorney and I should of known nobody wants me for my raven tresses or my big brown eyes. Not these days. I’m just the girl that worked alongside of the girl they found in back of an automobile. “Look,” I say to this Character-In-Search-of-a-Granddaughter, “I told everything I remember to the Chief and the Sheriff and all their Deputy-Shamuses. And your Mr. Daniels. So anything you want to know about Alma Taylor, you’ll have to ask him.”

  “I will,” she says, thinking. “You’re Katy Kulic?”

  “No, Ma’am.” I can feel persimmons in my mouth. “Everybody calls me Kulic’s Katy but—my name is Levin. Not Kulic and not Jones!”

  “Aha.” Like she just caught up the answer to something. “Maybe you know the sequel to the Jones story?” I didn’t know there was any. “Sure. To every story. After they put out Jones’s fire, the whole town went to sleep, so the fire sneaked up again. And a stiff breeze blew sparks on this fellow’s house and it burned down with him asleep inside. So maybe you better remember a little more.”

  I’ve got persimmons down to my stomach. “Who said I know any more?”

  “A smart girl always knows more than she tells and people generally telegraph their reservations. Now me, I’m frankly a Jones. And when my grandchild writes that at Hoytstown High they talk nothing but this murder of a waitress, I think those kids should be detecting conjugations and debating What Is Academic Freedom instead of What Was the Motive—Jealous Love or Thwarted Sex?—as if those are the only two manias in the world. Of course, the others don’t sell so many newspapers!” She jabs a thumb. “The busman says this whole community is split in two.”