An Eye for Murder

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “I understand.”

  “Do you really?” He pushed his coffee cup to the edge of his place setting. “We are different, you and me. You know your father. You have his photos, his things. You can prove he existed. I can’t. I’ve been to Germany. I traced my mother’s family, even tracked down one of her neighbors. But I never found out anything about my father. It’s as if he and his family never were. I don’t even have a picture. The only thing I have is that clock.”

  The waitress left the check on a little brown tray. I reached for it, and he did, too, and in the process his hand accidentally grazed mine.

  “I asked you, remember?” he said, his hand resting on mine for a beat. A flash of heat tore through me. He took the check.

  “That’s why I want to find out what happened to my father,” he went on, as if nothing had happened. “He’s part of me. Part of my heritage. I need to know who he was. And what he could possibly have done that would make someone want to kill him. You understand, don’t you?”

  I was about to say that I did, but then I stopped. Kurt Weiss wasn’t his father. Paul Iverson was. What kind of a heritage did that make?

  Chapter Thirty

  Marian had left by the time I got back, and the atmosphere was more relaxed. The phones had quieted, the pit bulls lounged at their desks, and even Roger came out to chat. As I went into the empty office to gather my things, Dory broke off from a conversation and headed toward me, a conspiratorial smile on her face.

  It struck me that wasn’t the attitude that someone with a crush on my lunch date would have. Wouldn’t she be more taciturn? Looking at me with narrowed eyes? Hoping I’d shrivel up and melt like the wicked witch? Then again, I’ve been away from the dating game for a long time; I may not know the cues.

  “You have a nice lunch?” she asked.

  I eyed her warily. “Very nice, thanks.”

  “He’s absolutely gorgeous.”

  I shrugged.

  “Oh, come on Ellie, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.” I hoped my face didn’t show my pique. “Even I could feel the sparks between you two.”

  “Sparks?”

  “Major sparks. You couldn’t keep your eyes off each other. You make a good couple.”

  I looked up. Maybe I was wrong about her.

  “How did you meet him, anyway?”

  I leaned against the wall. All was forgiven. I felt a silly smile on my lips. “Oh…It’s one of those long stories.”

  She pushed the door closed and hoisted herself up on the desk. “I’ve got time.”

  I filled her in, starting with the letter from Ruth Fleishman. I told her about Ben Skulnick, his boxes, and his E-mail account. I told her how I met David, how his mother worked for Iverson Steel, how she knew my father. But I left out the breakin and my suspicions about David’s parentage. She nodded and smiled, but when I finished, her face grew serious. “What was the name of that man again?”

  “Which man?”

  “The one whose E-mail you hacked into.”

  “I didn’t hack into his E-mail. I had his password.”

  “Right.” She paused. “So what was his name?”

  “Ben Skulnick.”

  Her brow furrowed.

  “He went by Sinclair, too.”

  “Skulnick. Sinclair…” Her voice trailed off. “Sorry.” She pushed off the desk and shot me a sidelong glance. “Who did you say David’s father was?”

  “His name was Kurt Weiss.”

  “And he died right after the war?”

  “In forty-five. He was gunned down at a concert in Douglas Park.”

  “And his mother worked for Iverson Steel?” I nodded.

  She started for the door. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

  “Dory, I have to get back north. It’s getting late.”

  “It’ll only take a minute.” She opened the door and walked over to Marian’s office. The door was shut. She put her hand on the doorknob.

  “What are you doing? You can’t just—”

  “It’s okay. She knows we have to get in there sometimes to enter things on her calendar. See—” She twisted the knob, and the door opened. “Roger locks up at night.”

  I followed her in. She went behind Marian’s desk to a set of shelves filled with books and several framed photographs. Dory reached for one of them and handed it to me. It was a black-and-white photograph of a man astride a horse on what looked to be a polo field. He wore a white shirt, jodhpurs and shiny leather boots and held a polo mallet in one hand. The sun gleamed on his white hair, lighting it up like spun silver. “This is Marian’s father,” she said. “Paul Iverson.”

  The man in the photo was David’s double. I looked up.

  Dory was watching me.

  The afternoon rush slowed traffic on the Kennedy. Sandwiched between a moving van and a yellow school bus, I nudged the Volvo forward, thinking about Dory. She knew how much David and Paul Iverson looked alike, and she wanted me to know it.

  But why? What was her stake in all of this? She’d only just met David, and you couldn’t really call our relationship a friendship. In fact, I’d considered her the type of person who tries to assert control by knowing what everyone else is up to. Now I wasn’t so sure.

  I turned on the radio, uneasily punching the buttons on the console. Random bits of noise spilled out: the twang of a country tune, a man barking in Spanish, two beats of a bass guitar. I settled on one of the all-news stations.

  “—latest poll by the Chicago Sun-Times ranks Marian Iverson eight percentage points in front of her challenger, downstate Democrat Frank Clayton…”

  Marian. Her reaction to David had been just as peculiar. Unnatural, now that I thought about it. I was certain she noticed the similarity between David and her father, but, unlike Dory, she didn’t say a word about it. That was strange. If a man showed up looking as much like my father as David, I’d be curious. At the very least, I’d say something, maybe show him the picture of my father. I might even quiz him about his family, in the remote chance he was a long-lost cousin.

  But Marian didn’t do any of those things. After a brief, awkward moment, she proceeded to ignore the situation. Pretended it wasn’t happening. Exactly what she did when we screened the Movietone newsreel. I flashed back to the newsreel of Iverson and Lisle. Their casual intimacy, the way their bodies almost touched. David Linden had to be the son of Paul Iverson and Lisle Gottlieb, and Marian knew it. Why did she pretend otherwise?

  I went over the chronology. Germany surrendered in the spring of ’45, and American soldiers started trickling back to the States by June. Kurt Weiss came back in July, Dad said. At which point he and Lisle picked up where they’d left off. By all accounts, whatever was between Lisle and Paul Iverson ended. A few scant weeks later, Kurt was murdered. Then a week or so after that, Lisle showed up at my father’s, claiming to be pregnant with Kurt’s child.

  I braked sharply, narrowing missing the van in front of me. The timing was the proof. Today, with home pregnancy tests, you know if you’re pregnant within a few days of conception, but back then it took longer—at least six or eight weeks. Lisle announced her pregnancy less than two weeks after Kurt died. But he’d only been home a few weeks at most. Which meant she was already pregnant when he came home. Lisle had lied.

  In a way, it was understandable. Abortions were expensive then, difficult to obtain, and dangerous. She may have felt she didn’t have any options. Paul Iverson wouldn’t be the type to drop everything simply because his mistress—his Jewish mistress—became pregnant. He probably slipped a few C-notes off his roll of bills and told her to take care of the problem herself. Don’t call me, sweetheart; I’ll call you.

  I edged into the left lane and came abreast of the moving van. The heat had glued my clothes to the seat and my skirt was hiked high on my thighs. The van driver ogled me as we inched up the Edens. Not much has changed, I thought darkly.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The next day da
wned bright and clear. A fresh breeze swept away the sultry air, and the sun threw shafts of gold across the floor. I brewed a perfect pot of coffee, watered the flowers, and went for a walk with Susan. We hiked over to the bike path, a ribbon of narrow asphalt that wound through the forest preserve. Dappled sun flickered through the dense shade, and the cushion of leaves under our feet was spongy.

  I’d already told Dory Sanchez about David, so I filled Susan in, figuring she’d be thrilled that after four years I was finally showing an interest in the opposite sex. I giggled as I related our meeting at The Ritz.

  “So we like him, do we?” She smiled enigmatically.

  “Yes. But there’s a problem.”

  “There always is.”

  I told her about his resemblance to Paul Iverson and my suspicions about his parentage. Susan slowed her pace. “Are we talking about Marian Iverson’s father? The woman you’re working for?”

  I plucked a wildflower from the edge of the path. “Yes.”

  “Ellie, how do you do this?”

  “Do what?” I twirled the flower stem.

  “How do you get yourself into these—these situations?” She circled her hands in the air. “Where everything is connected and turns back on itself?” She looked at me. “There’s some kind of theory about that, isn’t there?”

  “Probably the gravitational pull of Jewish geography.” She threw me a puzzled look. “An elemental force known to connect people, places, and things throughout the world.” I laughed. “No. More like the universe.”

  Susan arched an eyebrow. She had it down to an art. “Don’t sell it short. David’s trying to find his roots, and his mother lived in Lawndale. It used to be a Jewish neighborhood.”

  “But Iverson’s mill wasn’t in Lawndale.”

  “Women came from all over to work at the mill during the war.” I shrugged. “But what David is looking into happened in Lawndale.”

  “His father’s murder.”

  “The man he thinks is his father.”

  “So what are you doing to help?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why not? You do that kind of thing. You’re good at it.” A cloud of tiny gnats hovered above my head. I waved a hand, and they immediately dispersed. “How can I, knowing what I do?”

  She faced me. “How can you not? You’re the one who got him to Chicago in the first place.”

  “Not really.” I hesitated. “He came for that conference.”

  “Nice try.”

  I threw the flower down and picked up my pace. “Susan, don’t make me feel guiltier than I already do. I can’t help him.”

  “Why not?”

  “David grew up idolizing Kurt Weiss. Not only as his father, but as a war hero, also. I already shocked him once by telling him that Kurt died here, not in some trench in Europe. I can’t tell him the rest. It would rip him apart.”

  “But he’s searching for the truth.”

  “I don’t have the truth. All I’ve got is a gut feeling, a few seconds of a newsreel, and a series of suspicious events. I need more proof.”

  “All the more reason to find it.”

  We ducked under a low branch hanging over the footpath. “It’s…it’s not my place.”

  “Since when have you ever worried about propriety?” She bristled. “Ellie, you’ve already found out more about his family in a few weeks than he has in fifty years.”

  “What if he can’t face the truth?”

  “So now you’re sitting in judgment of what he can or can’t accept? From what you told me about his life, he’s already faced plenty.”

  “Maybe.” I shot her a look. “Anyway, I’ve got other issues to deal with.”

  The thing about Susan is that she always knows when to back off. “So, what’s going on with Barry?”

  I told her about Barry’s disappearing act. “No one knows where he is, and I’m worried. I’m beginning to think I should get someone to find him.”

  “You mean a private detective?”

  I shrugged. “Pam said the brokerage might hire someone. But I don’t know. What if he’s in trouble?”

  “Barry can handle himself.”

  “Half a million in the hole is a lot to handle.” I jammed my hands in my pockets. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m eternally grateful that I don’t have to live with him anymore, but he is the father of my child. For her sake, I hope he hasn’t done anything crazy—”

  “Crazy?”

  “Like—” I froze.

  Susan stopped, too. “What?” My heart started to jitterbug in my chest. “Ellie, are you okay?”

  “No, no. It’s not me.”

  “What?”

  “I just thought of something. About Kurt Weiss.”

  “David’s father.” She corrected herself. “The one he thinks is his father.”

  I nodded. “Remember I told you Kurt came home from the war and was killed a few weeks later?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just remembered something. Paul Iverson died around the same time. A heart attack, the articles said. That’s what Marian said, too. But someone else told me he committed suicide.”

  “Paul Iverson committed suicide? Who told you that?”

  “A woman who’s kind of the resident historian of the steel industry in Chicago. She said everyone knew he killed himself, but the family wanted to put a respectable face on it. So they let out that he died of a heart attack.”

  Susan searched my face. “I don’t get it. Why would a successful tycoon, a man with everything, even a mistress on the side, blow his brains out?”

  “Good question.”

  “You trust this woman? This historian?”

  “I have no reason not to.”

  “It sounds fishy.”

  “Not necessarily. A suicide wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to broadcast back then.”

  Susan shrugged.

  “If you’re hinting that she has an ax to grind, I don’t see it,” I said. “She seems pretty credible.”

  We rounded a bend on the bicycle path. I heard the hushed sound of traffic from the expressway. Susan threw her shoulders back and, with a determined tilt of her chin, picked up the pace for the home stretch.

  “You know,” I said, a few paces behind her, “yesterday David asked me what his father did that made someone want to kill him. What if it wasn’t what Kurt Weiss did? What if it was what he had?” Susan slowed. “Kurt had Lisle Gottlieb,” I went on. “Paul Iverson didn’t. He lost Lisle—and possibly his unborn child—to Kurt. And then Kurt was murdered.”

  “And then Iverson killed himself,” Susan finished.

  We walked in step with each other. Neither of us said anything.

  “You’re right about one thing,” she said finally. “What’s that?”

  “You’re going to need proof.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  It’s because of Rick Feld that I no longer cringe at the thought of a root canal. Not because of the classic rock music that flows out of hidden speakers on his walls. Or the picture of a young Robert Redford hanging at chair level. Or the special goggles that let you watch a video while he drills into your mouth. Rick’s skillful. And he gives great drugs.

  But I wasn’t camped out at his office the next morning for a procedure.

  After Rachel went to sleep, I tried to figure out how to prove that Lisle and Paul had an affair. Where had they gone for their trysts? I didn’t think there were many hotels on the East Side near the steel mill; at least none that Paul Iverson would have felt comfortable in. I couldn’t see Lisle bringing Paul Iverson to her room at the Teitelmans’ either. Too many prying eyes. Where would they have gone to consummate their relationship? I walked from room to room, trying to focus my thoughts. It was nearly midnight when it came to me. I called Dad.

  “Ellie, do you know what time it is?”

  “You weren’t asleep, were you?”

  “No, but—”

  “I’m sorry, Dad, but I need to know something
. Whatever happened to Feld, the man who owned the apartment building Lisle moved into?”

  “Lisle again?” He sighed. “What now?”

  “What happened to the man who rented her the apartment on Douglas Avenue? You said his name was Feld.”

  “I got no idea.” The strains of a clarinet played softly in the background. “But let me ask Marv. His family used to own real estate down there. I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

  I was brewing coffee the next morning when Dad called back. “Feld died a long time ago, but Marv thinks there’s a son up in Northbrook. A dentist or something.”

  “Not Rick Feld, the root canal guy.” See what I mean about Jewish geography? Which was why I was at Rick’s office before it opened, without an appointment.

  From his toys you might expect Rick Feld to be hip and New Age with Levis, sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt under his white coat. Or maybe the gold chain type with designer shoes and buffed nails. He was neither. In his mid sixties, Rick was small enough for a jockey, though he claimed to have been a crew coxswain in college. What little hair was left was short, gray, and curly. But he was a cheerful man, and the twinkle in his eye said he still enjoyed a good joke.

  His nurse ushered me into a small back room where Rick was hunched over his computer, his white medical jacket bathed in the glow of the monitor. Colorful graphics and lots of text splashed across the screen.

  “Good morning, Rick,” I said.

  He jerked his head up. “Ellie,” he said in a startled voice. “Do we have an appointment?”

  Shaking my head, I peered at the monitor. He quickly closed the file. A flush crept up his neck.

  A porn site, I figured. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s none of my business.”

  He glanced at the monitor, then back to me. “Actually”—he cleared his throat—“I was reading.” His face was cherry red. “Reading?”

  “There’s this science fiction site with free stories on it. It’s not bad.” He shrugged. “I log on when I get a minute.”

  So much for prurient inclinations. I grinned. “Sorry to intrude, but I wanted to ask you a question about your father.”