by Susan Shreve
The game of SLEUTH filled the time until dinner, beef stew or chicken cacciatore Delilah had left bubbling in a slow cooker just in case her First Boyfriend called to take her out to dinner.
Jess described SLEUTH to her friends as a murder mystery game that always, by necessity, took place in their house on Elm Street. Terrible things happened that year in the O’Fines clapboard colonial, painted yellow with black shutters. But the criminal was almost always discovered, turned in to the police, and then incarcerated — justice was done, thanks to the O’Fines sisters.
Teddy and Jess, PRIVATE EYES.
Jess’s favorite victim was Mrs. De Carlo, who had been Teddy’s fourth-grade teacher and lived across the street with Mr. De Carlo and their cat, Alicia-kitty-kitty.
“You’ll never guess what happened,” Jess would say as Teddy hurried into the house from basketball. “Mrs. De Carlo is lying in Mom’s room in a pool of blood.”
“Knifed?” Teddy would ask, a look of gleeful alarm on her face.
“Undoubtedly,” Jess would reply. “But I couldn’t find the weapon.”
Teddy would drop her backpack in the hall, grab a glass of milk and some sugar cookies from the jar in the kitchen, and follow Jess upstairs.
“Did you call the police?” Teddy asked.
“The police called me. They had a tip that Mrs. De Carlo was dead.”
Jess opened the door to Delilah’s room, where Mrs. De Carlo was lying on the floor. There was evidence of blood on the rug, fingerprints of blood on the four-poster bed where Delilah slept, on the recently painted yellow walls.
“Disgusting,” Teddy said.
Catsup. They washed it off before Delilah came home from work.
They kept a bag of tools in the hall closet for fingerprints and blood samples and any other evidence around the body. Teddy crouched next to Mrs. De Carlo, took a tiny knife from her kit, and sliced off a sliver of skin from Mrs. De Carlo’s finger.
“So what do you think happened?” Jess asked.
“I think Mrs. De Carlo came to our house to steal jewelry. Maybe Mom’s old wedding ring.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You see for yourself, Jess. Here she is deader than a doornail in Mom’s room and the jewelry drawer is open, yes?”
Jess giggled.
“Of course,” she said, always pleased when Teddy commented on her clues. “You’re so smart.”
“But I’m pretty sure Mr. De Carlo is the real culprit.”
“How come Mr. De Carlo?”
“He may seem nice enough, sort of harmless,” Teddy said on her knees, putting the blood on a glass slide. “But my guess is he’s been thinking that life would be a lot easier without Mrs. De Carlo, and who can blame him.”
“So he told her to steal the jewelry, right?”
“That’s what I figure,” Teddy said. “They don’t have a lot of money and no responsibilities except Alicia-kitty-kitty, and he’s been thinking maybe it would be nice to go to the Bahamas.”
“Right, and where would he get the money?”
“Exactly,” Teddy said.
“Mom looks a little rich and she’s divorced and probably keeps her good jewelry in a box in her room. So he thinks to himself, I’ll go over while the kids are in school. Everyone knows Delilah O’Fines is not the type to lock her front door.
“So in comes Mrs. De Carlo and she never even gets a chance to take anything of Mom’s. Right behind her with his special knife is Mr. De Carlo, and slice, slice, slice …”
“She’s dead.”
“And he takes the jewelry and what do you bet he’ll be in the Bahamas tonight.”
“So should I call the police?” Jess asked.
“Pronto.”
“Tell them our suspicions?”
“Tell them to send one man here to take Mrs. De Carlo to the morgue.”
“And another officer to head for the airport and stop Mr. De Carlo.”
“Perfect, Jess. That was waaaay too easy,” Teddy said. “Now we’ve got to clean up the catsup on Mom’s bedspread, unless the police have another case.”
Which was how their afternoons went, one murder after another — movie stars, rock musicians, neighbors, all murdered in Delilah’s bedroom or their father’s old study, and once in the kitchen.
And then, sometime after Christmas that year, during the January sales at the shops in downtown Larchmont, Teddy O’Fines started to shoplift, and SLEUTH LLC was finished.
The elevator doors opened at the L level, and Teddy followed Jess out into the lobby, crowded with young women in shimmery, short dresses and strappy high heels, holding long-stem glasses of champagne. There was a live band and close dancing and a huge bunny made of ice with a top hat cocked between his ears, towering halfway to the ceiling.
“The concierge will tell us where to find the police,” Teddy said, surprisingly calm. “And the police will find her.”
It didn’t occur to Teddy that something terrible might have happened to Baby Ruby. After all, they were in a hotel, plenty of people around to notice a baby, a crying baby, carried by a stranger. Ruby had probably been lying on the towel in room 618, crying and crying. Someone who worked at the hotel overheard her and had a key and had come in to check the room. Thinking the baby had been left alone, she picked her up and left for another part of the hotel.
“Jess,” she said, taking a gentle hold of her little sister’s wrist. “Didn’t Ruby cry?”
“Nope,” Jess said. “At least I didn’t hear her crying.”
Was the water running the whole time, and was that why she didn’t hear Ruby?
“The police will find her safe and sound,” Teddy said, leaning into her sister, feeling Jess’s fear as if it had weight.
Jess could only imagine the worst.
Ruby would never be found. She had been taken from the hotel and out into the city of Los Angeles to somewhere else. Maybe she had been kidnapped by the small man she had seen outside the elevators.
Or Ruby was dead.
And Jess would be in prison.
Over and over in her mind’s eye, Jess saw Baby Ruby lying on the towel on her back, her little legs dancing in the air.
She should never have shut the bathroom door to try on Whee’s makeup. That was the second mistake. And when she rushed to pick up a crying Baby Ruby, she should have double-checked to be sure that the door was really locked.
Her stomach was in knots, her breath so thin she was dizzy walking with Teddy across the lobby. She needed huge gulps of air or it was possible she’d faint.
Dying is how it felt.
“What does dying feel like?” she asked Teddy. “You know, like when you have those panic attack things and you think you’re dying?”
“No air is how it feels,” Teddy said.
“I can’t breathe.”
“You’re breathing,” Teddy said, giving her a squeeze. “Just not deep enough.”
“I keep thinking what I will tell the police.”
“You’ll tell them the truth, Jess,” Teddy said. “They’re supposed to help us out.”
“Maybe.”
“That’s their job, to help people in trouble.”
“Well, I’m a person in trouble.”
If Jess told the police the truth, they would know it was her fault. Why, they’d ask her, was she was trying on her sister’s wedding dress in the first place? If she was going to play dress-up, why didn’t she leave the bathroom door open so she could still see Baby Ruby lying on the towel in room 618?
She wondered, would she be able to speak to the police at all?
Or would she bolt?
“Do you remember how long it was between the time you went into the bathroom and then discovered that Baby Ruby was missing?” Teddy asked. “The police will want to know that.”
“Five minutes, maybe.”
“It had to be more than five minutes, Jess. You’re totally made-up. Lipstick, blush, that foundation stuff. Even mascara
.”
“Maybe ten minutes. Fifteen at the most,” Jess said. “What’re you going to ask the person when we get to the concierge desk?”
“I’ll tell them we have a missing baby and could they contact the police.”
“I have to pee first,” Jess said, touching Teddy on the arm.
“No, stay,” Teddy said. “This will just take a second and then you can pee.”
But even before Teddy finished her sentence, Jess bolted.
In the cubicle, she locked the door and checked her phone.
Eight thirty. An hour and a half since her family had left on the elevator for the rehearsal dinner, since she had stood in the open doorway of room 618 and watched them go and seen the strange little man walking in her direction, taking her into account.
For a while she had chattered to Baby Ruby, maybe half an hour, maybe a little bit more, and then she went into the bathroom and opened the makeup bag with Whee’s new stash. Seven thirty or seven forty-five.
Maybe fifteen minutes since she left the linen closet and met up with Teddy. And in all the time between, she had been in the bathroom.
She realized that she’d been in the bathroom of room 618 for as long as half an hour — half an hour with the door shut and the water running. She would not have been able to hear Baby Ruby if she cried. Her heart fell.
She fled the ladies’ room, through the door and across the lobby, running in the direction of the elevators, looking for an exit sign.
She would not tell the police.
Somewhere in this hotel or in Los Angeles or on a plane or train or bus, Baby Ruby was still alive, and Jess would find her. She had lost her and she would find her.
Jess wasn’t a babysitter any longer. She was a criminal.
Everywhere she went, Jess O’Fines was known as a super girl — in Larchmont, at her grandmother’s house in New Haven, in New York City where her father lived. Not a goody-goody or a teacher’s pet or even a girl who never got into trouble. She got into trouble, small trouble, failing a test, forgetting her homework or leaving her backpack at the market, or not going to bed at nine o’clock p.m. flat as Delilah insisted.
But she wasn’t selfish or complaining or rude or unkind. For that matter, she wasn’t afraid of consequences in the way that good girls are sometimes good only because they are afraid of what will happen if they aren’t.
If Jess was unhappy, no one knew about it. Not even her mother and never Whee. Sometimes she told Teddy, but Teddy was living at the Home for Girls with Problems and could only talk to her family once a week.
Everyone thought of Jess as a girl who didn’t let the problems in her life get her down.
She made mistakes but never big ones — not like Danny, who was irresponsible, or Teddy, who turned the family upside down by stealing, or even golden-girl Whee, sweet, successful Whee.
Delilah had even said that Whee won the Blue Ribbon in a character contest, First Place for Selfishness.
Jess kept the bad news to herself.
Now she had done something terribly wrong, worse than anyone in her family had ever done. She was certainly more of a serious criminal than Teddy, who had only stolen things. Stealing may be against the law, but no one had ever been hurt by Teddy’s shoplifting except Teddy herself.
Jess opened the exit door next to the elevators, which led to the stairs, and sat down on the bottom step, dialing Teddy.
“Jess!”
“I am not going to tell the police.”
“You have to tell them,” Teddy said.
“This is my fault. It’s what I’m doing, Ted, and I need you to help me.”
“It’s crazy,” Teddy said. “It may even be against the law not to report what happened to the police. We’re losing valuable time, Jess.”
“The police would ask me all these questions and fill out their reports, and by the time they’d finished, Baby Ruby could be on an airplane for Guatemala and we’d never see her again.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m here,” Jess said. “Go to the elevators, the ones we just got off, and next to them is a door with an exit sign above it. Open the door and I’m sitting on the bottom step.”
It was the previous winter, especially cold and snowy in Larchmont for March. Jess, just home from school on a Thursday afternoon, had been in the kitchen standing at the fridge. She was examining the slim contents of the shelves for a snack when the telephone call came from the police to report that Teddy had shoplifted at the jewelry counter at Saks Fifth Avenue. She was at the store in the office on the fourth floor, waiting to be picked up by an adult. She had been charged.
Delilah had answered the phone.
“Oh god, no,” Delilah said.
Jess took a strawberry yogurt, closed the door to the fridge, and slid into a kitchen chair.
“Charged?” Delilah said. “Yes, of course.”
Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“Charged. I understand. Of course.”
She hung up the phone and leaned against the stove.
“I have to go to the city,” she said, sinking into a chair. “Saks. I haven’t a clue where to park in the city.”
“Is everything going to be okay?” Jess asked.
“No, it’s not going to be okay at all,” Delilah said, standing.
She put on her trench coat, checking her face in the mirror in the hall.
“No one’s injured or dead, but Teddy lifted a diamond bracelet at Saks this afternoon.”
She brushed the tears off her face with the sleeve of her coat.
Jess was standing now, putting on her jacket, slipping her backpack over her shoulders.
“So this means she skipped afternoon classes, took the train to New York, headed uptown to Saks, and …” Delilah didn’t finish her sentence.
“I want to come with you to New York,” Jess said.
“No, Jess,” Delilah said. “You are not coming with me.” She leaned down and rested her cheek against Jess’s. “You, my one good-as-gold child, are going across the street to the Grosses’ and I’ll call from the city to let you know what’s up. Do your homework.”
“I need to come with you.”
“You don’t, Jess. You need to do your homework and not spend the afternoon on the phone.”
Jess folded her arms across her chest.
“I’m going up to get my purse and keys and heading out pronto. So you decide, babe, it’s here or the Grosses’. Let me know.”
Jess had decided.
With her mother upstairs, she slipped out the front door, opened the door to the gray minivan in the driveway, crawled into the far backseat, and pulled the blanket used for Chaucer over her whole body and head.
“Bye, babes,” she could hear her mother call to her as she opened the car door and climbed in, turned on the engine. Jess could tell she was backing out of the drive onto Elm Street.
Even before Delilah had turned off Elm Street onto the highway, she was on the phone. First to Mrs. Gross.
“I’m on my way to the city for a minor emergency, Patty, and have left Jess alone to do her homework, so I’m checking to see if she can call you if she needs help.”
And then she called Aldie about Teddy.
“I cannot handle her, Aldie. You’re in the city. Maybe we could meet at Saks.”
There was a pause, but Jess could not hear her father’s voice.
“I think she should live with you for the rest of the year and go to P.S. 101 or wherever. I have no effect whatever on her. She cannot even hear my voice.”
The blanket smelled of dog, so Jess took it off her head and kept her head behind the row of seats, where her mother couldn’t see her.
Teddy would want her there. Jess was sure of it. She needed to be there, just in case the police suggested that Teddy go to jail. Or insisted that she go to jail. Jess would go to jail with her. Just the thought of jail with Teddy, closed up in a little cell with her sister and no parents, only a police guard o
utside their room, had an appeal to Jess. That close to her sister, Teddy’s protector, her very best friend.
The ride was longer, much longer than it had seemed to Jess when she was sitting up in her seat and driving into the city. Delilah put on music and changed the station to news and then to NPR and then off.
“I’m so nervous,” she said more than once, as if someone were in the car sitting next to her. The phone rang and she answered on the fifth ring. It was Aldie.
“Meet me in the office of Saks on the fourth floor,” she said. “Be there.”
Maybe Aldie responded and maybe he didn’t, but Delilah was silent from that moment until the car stopped in the city. Delilah climbed out, and Jess sat up in the backseat.
Delilah said nothing. Nothing at all. Jess got out. Delilah locked the car, headed up the steps from the parking garage to the street and across Fifth Avenue, Jess following behind her. Through the doors of Saks Fifth Avenue, past the cosmetics and accessories to the other side of the store and the bank of elevators. In the elevator, Delilah didn’t speak. Neither did Jess until the doors opened and they snaked through the counters of children’s and teen’s clothing to the office.
“I thought it would make Teddy happy to see me,” she said finally.
“I’m sure it will,” Delilah said.
“And I thought it might help you.”
“That’s a stretch,” Delilah said. “What would help me is for my children, my beloved and impossible children, to do what I ask them to do.”
Teddy was sitting in the middle of a long bench pushed against a wall in the main room of the office, a woman behind the counter on the telephone. A policeman leaning against the counter, waiting for her to get off the phone.
She was wearing dark pants, a green blouse that Jess knew she had shoplifted from Hudson’s Department Store, and a navy basketball letter jacket with L in red on the back, which had belonged to Danny. She was facing forward, very still — her expression fixed, neither sad, nor combative, nor anything particular.
Her eyes met Jess’s eyes, but she didn’t smile.
Jess sat down beside her sister, conscious of the space between them, moving closer, leaning into her until their bodies touched.
