An Eye for Murder

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “Sorry.” I cleared off a section of table.

  He sat down gingerly and took me through last night’s events, jotting down notes as we talked. I pulled on a lock of hair. Hadn’t he read Fletcher and North’s report? But when I got to the missing cartons, he frowned. “Cartons? Those weren’t on the report.”

  What’s that they say about making assumptions? “Er…I didn’t realize they were gone until later.”

  “What was in them?”

  I explained.

  “So you had two boxes that belonged to a man you never knew.” He angled his head. “How long were they in your house?”

  “A couple of days.”

  “And the man they belong to is dead.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you know where was he living?”

  “Rogers Park. But the woman he was living with died of a heart attack a few days ago, a month or so after him.”

  “What about relatives?” I shrugged.

  He looked around, his fingers smoothing a carroty mustache that was longer on one side than the other. Then he dropped his hand, as if he’d considered and rejected whatever he’d been thinking.

  “Did you get any prints?” I asked. “The officers dusted.”

  And left a grimy residue over everything, Fletcher’s denial notwithstanding.

  “I wouldn’t hold your breath. They’re probably yours.” He wiggled his fingers. “Even junkies wear gloves these days.”

  “So you don’t need my prints? Or my daughter’s?” I had a set of Rachel’s prints from one of those Kid-Safe programs they held at the mall years ago.

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Ms. Foreman. Very few home burglaries end up in an arrest. You got off easy. Consider yourself lucky.” That was the second time a cop had told me I was lucky.

  “You’re convinced it was druggies?”

  “You have any workmen here recently?”

  “No.”

  “Maids? Landscapers?”

  “Not anymore.”

  He checked his notes. “What about your ex? Any arguments over visitation, alimony, that kind of thing?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” He looked up. “I’m sure it wasn’t him,” I added hastily. “He has my daughter this weekend. And there’s nothing here he wants. Anymore.”

  I saw the trace of a smile. “You change your locks?”

  “Last night.”

  “How about an alarm system?”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “Try to. It’ll give you peace of mind.”

  Before he left, he gave me some brochures on home security, part of the Police Are Your Partners program. As he pulled away from the house, I realized that I’d dealt with more cops in one week than I had in thirty years. They’d evolved from pigs to pals. Which probably goes to prove what my father always said: I would become more conservative when I had something to lose. I hate it when he’s right.

  I was hauling bags of trash out to the curb when Susan showed up. A willowy redhead who, even in sweats, manages to make me look shabby, Susan Siler considers herself an outcast in a village where all the women are blonde and wear Birkenstocks and pearls. Together. She cast an appraising look around the kitchen. “It doesn’t look that bad.”

  “I’ve been cleaning up since dawn.”

  “Then it’s time for a break. Come on, let’s walk.” She held the door open for me. “What’s the final tally?”

  “Besides what I already told you, nothing. The jewelry, two pieces of silver, and those cartons.”

  “Strange.”

  “I know.” We jogged over to Happ Road, the north end of our circuit. A weak sun penetrated the heavy overcast, but the air was still somewhere between Fairbanks and Seattle on a good day. Susan was in a teal warm-up jacket that made her hair look incandescent. I was in scruffy gray sweats with paint stains on the legs.

  We fell into step, and I summarized O’Malley’s visit. “His attitude was basically ‘Get over it, lady.’ I don’t think they’re going to find the assholes who did it.”

  “What else is new?”

  “He left me some brochures on home security.” I said. “Part of the Police Are Your Partners program.”

  She rolled her eyes. “So what’s your next step?”

  “I don’t know. Call my insurance company. Move on. Try not to take it personally.” I glanced at her. “Nice jacket.”

  “Twenty-four dollars at TJ Maxx.” Susan and I first met at a discount shopping outlet when she pointed out a mint green Garfield and Marks suit marked down 80 percent and said it was my color. We became friends over coffee when I confessed to smashing Rachel’s fingers in the car door, and she admitted she’d once sat on her daughter and broke her collarbone. But I knew she’d be my friend for life when she told me she had actually seen Grace Slick on a Marin County beach watching sea otters.

  “I don’t think I’ll be shopping much for a while,” I said. “Not even discount?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not just the breakin. I should never have kept the house.” I told her about Barry’s stock. “When we split up, I bought the concept that Rachel should have as little disruption in her life as possible. I should strive for continuity. That’s why I fought so hard to keep the house.” A couple of kids on bicycles flew past us, barely swerving in time to avoid a collision.

  “Most women do,” Susan said.

  “We were sold a bill of goods. Everything I make goes for the mortgage, utilities, and food. God forbid the water heater blows, or the air conditioner breaks down, or the roof starts to leak. I’m always struggling. Now I’m supposed to install an alarm system. The house is a goddamn albatross around my neck.”

  Susan didn’t say anything. She’s a good listener.

  “Now compare that with Barry. Okay. For a few months, right after the settlement, he was strapped. Maybe even a year. But now he’s got his condo, a grand or so in child support every month, and no other obligations. Nada. He even has enough to play the market.” I stepped up my pace. “Tell me. What’s wrong with this picture?”

  “You made the best decision you could at the time.”

  “It was shortsighted.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself. How could you predict the future?”

  We reached the Catholic church at the end of the road. The parking lot was a sea of cars, with a white limo bearing a Just Married sign in front. Pink and white streamers floated from the bumper. “Where’s Dustin Hoffman when you need him?”

  “Huh?”

  “Someone should break up the wedding while there’s a chance.” I pointed to the limo. “They only have a fifty-fifty shot anyway.”

  Susan’s other eyebrow arched. After eight years of friendship, we can sense when one of us is dissembling, even if we are just trying it out on each other. “My, we are bitter today.”

  “What if Barry doesn’t come through with child support, Susan? What am I going to do?”

  “Don’t you think you might be overreacting just a bit?”

  “With Barry?”

  “Whatever happens, you will survive. At the very worst, you’ll borrow money. People do it every day. They have these places called banks.”

  “Assuming my credit rating isn’t in the tank. Which it probably is. It takes years to sort out your credit after a divorce. And with Barry’s track record—”

  “You know, sometimes I get the feeling you like to obsess about things, Ellie. You know what they say. If you fixate long enough, you can actually cause it to happen. A selffulfilling prophecy.”

  “I’m not obsessing. I just want to be able to…to manage the situation. Control it.”

  “Aha. Now we get to the root of the problem. Except that last I heard, random breakins and ex-husbands are beyond ex-wives’ control.” I started to cut in, but she overrode me. “Look, Ellie. I know it’s frustrating. You want answers right now. For all the right reasons. And you’ve had a rough time. But you’re going to have to ride it out. You
never know. Maybe the detective will catch those thieves. Maybe the stock will come back.”

  “And maybe there’s a tooth fairy.”

  We turned west past Rachel’s school. We were into a rhythm now, hiking at a good clip. The bicyclists who passed us earlier were now criss-crossing the playground.

  Susan changed the subject. “Marian Iverson’s having a fundraiser up in Lake Forest in a couple of weeks.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Doug’s supporting her.” Susan’s husband, a village trustee, is involved in local politics. “Why don’t you come with us?” I wrinkled my nose. When I was young, I joined the revolution, confident that we would topple the fascist pigs corrupting the system. I read the Revolutionary Times and studied my “3M’s”: Mao, Marcuse, and Marx. It didn’t last. I was told I was hopelessly bourgeoise. The most I could aspire to was running a safe-house. Since then I’ve tried to eschew politics.

  “She’s a woman, Ellie. And she came out pro-choice.”

  “I suppose for a Republican that takes courage.”

  Susan giggled. “Come on. Compared to some of the candidates you’ve supported, this one might even win.” I shot her a look. “And you never know. The man of your dreams might be there.”

  I broke into a jog and left her in my dust.

  Chapter Eleven

  That afternoon I made a trip to the store to restock my cabinets. At the end of one aisle was an eye-catching display of smoking accessories, including pipe cleaners, butane lighters, and flints. Festooned with colorful ribbons and signs, it wasn’t there to attract young smokers, of course. I picked up a small can of lighter fluid.

  As I pulled into the garage, I got the shakes. I thought about the bottle of bourbon above the refrigerator. That wasn’t a solution. Neither was weed. Or cigarettes. Or any of the other substances I abuse from time to time. I sat in the car until the trembling stopped, wondering if that was going to happen whenever I came home from now on.

  Barry dropped Rachel off at the end of the driveway around four but sped away before I could talk to him. After she unpacked, I poured two glasses of fresh lemonade and opened a box of cookies. She eyed me suspiciously. “What’s wrong?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You never make lemonade and cookies. Something’s wrong.”

  “Okay.” I leaned across the table. “Here it is. Someone broke into the house last night.” When I finished explaining, she jumped up and threw her arms around me. “Oh, Mom, are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, honey.” I buried my face in her neck. Her skin was smooth and warm. Still little girl’s skin.

  “Were you scared?”

  “I wasn’t here when they broke in. But yes, I was scared.” She released her grip and helped herself to another cookie.

  “What did they get?”

  “That’s just it,” I said. “Not much. A few pieces of silver, some jewelry. Nothing of yours.” I took a sip of lemonade. I didn’t mention Skull’s cartons.

  She stroked her jaw with her fingers, just like Dad. “Probably someone on drugs.”

  I nearly choked on my lemonade. “How do you know that?”

  “Everyone knows drug addicts steal to feed their habit.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Mom, even Officer Friendly warns kids about stuff like that.”

  Part of the Police Are Your Partners program, no doubt. “Well, the police agree with you. They’re doing what they can, but there is a chance they’ll never catch the people who did it.”

  She grabbed the last cookie off the plate and crammed half of it in her mouth. “That’s okay.” She chewed thoughtfully. “I’ve got you to protect me.”

  From her mouth to God’s ears. I bit into the other half of the cookie.

  That night I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and tried to restore order to my office and my life. We live on a cul de sac, and I’d always thought ours was the safest house on the block. After all, what burglar in their right mind would risk driving past seventeen houses, twice, just to rob mine? If they had been on foot, they might have cut across a few backyards, but, given that they made off with heavy cartons, that seemed unlikely.

  Which meant that whoever broke in was pretty hard up or strung out. But then, why leave the cash and the jewelry? Wasn’t that exactly what junkies wanted? I finished vacuuming and bent over to unplug the cord. As I did, I came across Skull’s Zippo underneath the desk, wedged between the hard drive and the wall. It must have fallen out of my bag when Fletcher was here. I picked it up, its silver casing glinting in the light. As I straightened up, the image of two men watching me lug Skull’s cartons out to the car outside Ruth Fleishman’s sprang into my mind. Were they the addicts who broke into my house? Did they follow me home, thinking those cartons somehow contained the mother lode?

  I palmed the lighter. Maybe I should call O’Malley. No. That was stupid. Drug addicts don’t lurk in front of old ladies’ homes on the off chance that someone might emerge with cartons. Susan was right. I was getting obsessive.

  I took the Zippo down to the kitchen. The lighter fluid was sitting on the counter. I unscrewed the small bolt on the bottom, filled the cottony cavity with fluid, and reattached the screw. I flipped open the cap and rolled the flint. A steady orange flame leapt up. Who was Ben Skulnick? And why did he have my name? I knew practically nothing about him except that he changed his name, spent time at the library, and knew my father sixty years ago.

  Capping the flame, I ran my fingers over the bumpy engravings of the S, K, and L. This lighter could be the only tangible proof that the man ever existed. Ninety years of life reduced to a Zippo. For some reason, Dorothea Lange’s series of poor migrant workers drifted into my mind; stoic faces staring into a desolate future.

  No. My hand closed around the lighter. There was something else. The scrap of paper that fell out of his library book. With a web site scrawled in pencil. The web site had meant something to Skull—enough to write it down. I searched my memory, willing the URL to come into my mind: www.familyroots.com.

  I went back upstairs and logged on, waiting impatiently while the computer downloaded information that, like a mosaic, gradually merged into a series of images. At the top of the page was a sepia-toned photo of a woman with a baby in her arms. The baby was in an old-fashioned sailor suit, and the woman’s hair was coiled in braids around her head. Below that were more images: a Davy Crockett lookalike in buckskins and coonskin hat; a line of immigrants at Ellis Island; a little boy in knickers rolling a hoop. A paragraph of text in the center described the web site as a free exchange of genealogical information with over fifty thousand topics in its database.

  I hit an icon and a page of topics materialized: everything from Icelanders in the Dakotas to descendants of the Mexican revolution. A flashing cursor urged me to type in the topic or surname I wanted to search. I typed in Foreman and was promptly informed that there was a family tree for the name Foreman. Did I want to search through all the posts for that name?

  I clicked, and twenty messages popped up on the screen, each requesting information about a specific Foreman. Dad was an only child, but Roses, Simons and Leopolds ran through his family tree. I scrolled through the messages looking for those names. I didn’t find anything.

  Hitting the link to a new page, I was invited to upload my branch of the family tree to the Internet. I declined and clicked onto a site that claimed it could search through four hundred million names for relatives. Half a billion names. Why would anyone spend that much time chasing down a few of them? Were people that isolated? Maybe finding a distant cousin or great-uncle somehow elevated your family’s status. We’ll call your folk hero and raise you an eccentric or two.

  I typed in the name “Skulnick,” imagining the computer culling through four hundred million names. The results came back. No match. I tried again. Nothing. There was no family tree for the Skulnicks.

  No clothes, no boxes, no web site. I had struck out. I shut down the compu
ter and changed into my bathrobe. I should have tried harder to open the box at Mrs. Fleishman’s. Now it was too late.

  I turned off the light and pulled the covers under my chin, thinking how ironic, even sad, it was that Skull and Ruth died so close together. Maybe Officer Powers was right. Maybe they had been more than just landlord and boarder. I curled on my side. At least they had each other.

  Some pair. I smiled, recalling how hard Ruth tried to open Skull’s metal box. How frustrated she was when she couldn’t. How she threw it back in the carton with an exasperated sigh.

  I stopped smiling. Something about that nagged at me. Something about the box. I mentally replayed the scene. Ruth put the metal box back in the carton. I found the lighter. Then she asked me to take Skull’s clothes to Or Hadash, and I carried two of the cartons down to my car. No, it wasn’t the box itself. It was the carton the metal box had been in. The third carton. I had taken two cartons downstairs. But there was a third. And now that I was thinking about it, I didn’t recall seeing the third carton when I got back to Mrs. Fleishman’s.

  I propped myself up on my elbow and turned on the light. Ruth had been sprawled on her side in the middle of the floor. One arm was extended as if she was raising her hand. Her other arm was bent across her middle. The bed was against the wall, the desk under the window. The closet door was open. But there was no carton in the room. I was sure. Mrs. Fleishman was lying on the spot where it had been.

  I got up and shuffled into the bathroom. Ruth had probably moved it herself. She said she wanted to get rid of it. Except that she’d watched me lug the other cartons downstairs without lifting a finger to help. Why would she suddenly decide to move the third one by herself? Moreover, given her age and condition, how could she? Maybe the strain was what triggered her heart attack. But then, where was the carton?

  I picked up my hairbrush. Maybe someone else moved it for her. I ran the brush through my hair. That was it. Her neighbor, Shirley Altshuler, had come over for coffee after I left. She and Ruth probably shoved it across the hall into another room. Possibly even downstairs. I got back in bed and slipped a pillow over my head. Problem solved.