Group, Photo, Grave (A Kiki Lowenstein Mystery)

by Slan, Joanna Campbell

  Leah Ginsberg was right on Ester’s heels. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ears, she asked, “Were any of the roads impassable? The flooding used to be bad over by White Road.”

  “I tried to come the back way, but a downed tree blocked my route. A lot of limbs have snapped off. The water level is high in the streets,” I said.

  “I hope Prescott has enough sense to send officers to usual trouble spots. We have a few traffic lights that always seem to go out during bad storms. Maybe I should call him,” said Robbie.

  “Oh, no, you don’t.” Sheila pulled him down beside her on the sofa. “Not when he’s so eager to have your job. Let him make a public fool of himself. He deserves it.”

  “But citizens could get hurt,” Robbie said, as he rubbed the flat of his palms hard against his legs.

  “If he gets your job, Robbie, you can count on it,” I said.

  My comment put me back in Sheila’s good graces. She thawed like a spring day.

  “Besides, Prescott probably won’t listen to you. In fact, if you suggest something, he’ll probably do just the opposite,” Sheila said.

  “Kiki, we heard you are working on a wedding album for Sheila,” said Toby Pearlman. Toby wore reading glasses with round black rims, a striking accent to her silver hair. “May we see it?”

  “Sure,” I said. “That reminds me. Sheila? What have you heard from Vincent about your photos?”

  She hadn’t heard anything, so she asked Robbie to text-message the photographer. Vincent messaged right back that he would drop them off to me at my store maybe tomorrow and no later than Friday. Seems he’d been booked for a fashion shoot in Costa Rica, and he wanted the photos off his “to do” list before he flew out.

  Sheila’s coffee table was the best spot for viewing the album. First I grabbed a pen and paper so I could take notes. Then we got everyone seated. Anya took a spot on the carpet near Sheila’s feet. The Jimmy Girls gathered around the album with the sort of casual, polite interest that suggested they knew nothing about scrapbooking. But when I opened the book to the title page, there was a collective gasp.

  I’d created blossoms in pink, purple and white, with a few tiny touches of navy thrown in. The album title was raised slightly above a 3-D layer of paper blossoms, an effect both stunning and elegant at the same time.

  “What are those flowers?” asked Toby.

  “Paper?” asked Leah.

  “You cut every one of those? By hand?” asked Ester. “It’s so beautiful!”

  Indeed it was.

  “How many flowers are there, Mom?” Anya knew the answer, but she was prompting me so I could share the extent of my diligence.

  “Four hundred and fifty,” I said. “The blossoms are layers stacked on layers. So it took a lot of punching to get them just right.”

  “And the pistils and stamens?” asked Toby. “What are those?”

  “Some are paper wrapped around wire. Some are very, very thin paper beads I made.”

  “Was it hard work?” asked Ester. She’d brought with her a small bag with wooden handles. From the depths, she pulled a needlepoint belt. These seemed to be a sartorial necessity for CALA alums. Every other woman of a certain age either owned one or had crafted one for her husband and son. From my spot at the table, I could see Ester stab the canvas with a long thick needle.

  She saw me staring at her work and smiled.

  What other needles might be in her bag?

  I turned my attention back to Anya, who was saying. “It wasn’t easy. Mom had to stop and soak her fist in ice water once every hour. All that punching caused her hand to swell.”

  Sheila slowly turned the page. To the left was a baby picture of Sheila and to the right was a baby picture of Robbie. Both were mounted on a background paper with a slight ivory sheen. On Robbie’s side, I used the navy flowers to make it more masculine, while on Sheila’s I used shades of pink.

  All the women made oohed and aahed as they looked at the pictures. The rest of the album elicited the same sort of interest, until they arrived upon the pages I’d done of Sheila in high school. These pages evoked a narrative, as I’d hoped they would. Soon, my pen was flying as the group of friends shared one anecdote after another. The stories kept coming, as one recollection led to another. When the sharing died down, I turned the page. Under a flap, my concession to Sheila’s vanity, was a photo of the Jimmy Girls.

  “Oh! There’s Miriam,” said Toby, with a hitch in her voice. “In the back. You can barely see her. Will you look at her? She was so shy back then.”

  “I need a glass of water,” said Ester, in a ragged voice.

  “Remember how the boys would tease her about her nose?” Toby turned to her friends. “She would hide her face as she walked down the halls. Her hair was always in her eyes.”

  “I remember how she hid behind a book in all our classes. Hoping that no one could see her, I guess,” said Sheila.

  “She got her nose bobbed in the summer of her junior year. Just like the rest of us. What a change that made in her life,” said Leah, fingering her necklace nervously. “Boys discovered her. She went out every Friday and Saturday night. She never stayed home after that.”

  “I left space for a memorial page,” I said. “Do you have any pictures of her? After her surgery?”

  “I do,” said Toby. “They’re in an album I have on Snapfish.”

  Anya was dispatched to open Sheila’s computer and search for Toby’s Snapfish account. In a few minutes, my daughter came back with two prints from Sheila’s color printer. The paper quality wasn’t great, so she’d wisely forwarded the emails to me. When I got back to the store, I would print the pictures on high quality photo paper. But for now, we could at least look at the photos. I was curious about the missing Jimmy Girl.

  “Wow. What a difference a nose job made!” I examined the picture closely. I set the photo of Miriam after her surgery next to the photo taken before the cosmetic procedure. Of course, you couldn’t see much of her in the older pic because she stood in the shadows, but you could see enough to tell how much she’d changed.

  “The rest of us benefited from the rhinoplasty,” said Sheila, “but she was totally transformed.”

  “Who would have guessed,” said Toby, “that her nose would start collapsing and couldn’t be repaired?”

  Chapter 67

  “But you had corrective surgery,” I said to Sheila. “Why didn’t Miriam do the same?”

  Almost on cue, Gracie whimpered as the storm continued to bluster. A crackle of lightning brightened the whole house for a split second, then came the boom of thunder in reply.

  “She tried,” said Toby gently. “You have to understand that Miriam’s transformation was astonishing. Her original nose was incredibly large and ugly. So she went from major wallflower to belle of the ball overnight. She had actually started modeling, and she made a good living at it. That’s why she moved to California, and there she was in great demand. So when her nose began to change, she was in denial. It was too much for her. It was like her world collapsed rather than her nose.”

  “Most of us needed corrective rhinoplasty,” said Sheila. “But for her, it was more than a correction. It was imperative.”

  “Are you saying that Dr. Hyman was a quack?” I raised my voice over the pounding of rain outside.

  “No,” said Ester. She’d returned from the kitchen and now stood next to the sofa with both a glass of water in her hands. “My father is a surgeon. He knew Dr. Hyman very, very well. You have to understand that plastic surgery has been around since the Egyptians practiced it around 1200 BC on the faces of mummies. Of course, procedures have changed over the years with the advent of modern medicine. But nose jobs have been around for centuries. Dr. Hyman worked within the protocols of the time.”

  “Did all of you have problems?” I asked.

  “No,” said Toby. “I didn’t.”

  “That’s because you had the least amount of work done to yours,” said Leah.


  “Dr. Hyman did what he was taught to do, in accordance with the standards of the time,” said Ester. She shifted her weight and set her jaw. Her knuckles whitened as she gripped her glass.

  “He was a quack,” said Toby, as a loud boom of thunder shook the house.

  “That’s not fair,” said Ester. “I know you have strong feelings about the man, but you have to be fair! Twenty-five years ago, they didn’t consider how well your nose would match your facial structure. Nor did they realize that removing cartilage from the nose tip would later be a problem. Back then, all nose surgery was reductive.”

  “So what happened?” I asked. “You seem to be saying her nose was fine at first.”

  “It was,” said Ester. “It looked lovely. So much so that she was approached by a modeling agency and the rest, as they say, is history. But slowly her nose collapsed because the internal architecture was compromised. Her nostrils were pinched, making breathing difficult. She started snoring.”

  “We all had that to some degree,” said Toby, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. “The changes, the collapsing, and snoring.”

  “Yes,” said Ester, “but for Miriam it was different. She was overly invested in her looks. She’d gone from being the ugly duckling to the proverbial swan. Once she started modeling, she had other work done. But they couldn’t do much for her nose. There wasn’t enough to work with. The bridge was collapsing from the inside.”

  Sheila shook her head. “I’ve never understood this. I was able to find a good surgeon. Sure, I had to fly to Chicago, but I got mine fixed. Why couldn’t Miriam do the same?”

  “Come on, Sheila,” said Ester. She sat back down and picked up her needlework. “You’re smart enough to realize that each of us is different. She just didn’t respond to surgery as well as she would have hoped.”

  “Anya, honey, could you bring me a refill of my tea?” asked Leah. “Thank you, dear.”

  When my daughter left, Leah leaned in closely. “Miriam had taken a much younger lover. He slept over one night and told her the next morning that she snored like a freight train. She was devastated.”

  “That’s right,” said Ester, in a near whisper. “She called me the next day and sobbed her heart out. Then she made the rounds of doctors one more time. They all said the same thing: They might be able to help, but they couldn’t guarantee the results. Here’s another difference, Sheila. You’ve kept out of the sun and you don’t smoke. Miriam did both and her skin lacked elasticity.”

  “That’s why she did it,” said Leah.

  “Did what?” I asked, hurriedly. Not wanting Anya to overhear.

  “She killed herself,” said Toby.

  Chapter 68

  Same day…

  A suburb of Los Angeles, California

  “Thank you for coming to the house,” said Lorraine, as she sat in a wingback chair with her feet on a footstool. Barton, her butler, and Louisa, her maid, had helped her down the stairs and into the chair. She was far too unstable to walk on her own. “I’m afraid I’m not up to traveling downtown these days. The traffic is just horrendous.”

  They both knew she was having a remission. But she still had her pride, and she hated admitting how weak she was.

  “It’s always a pleasure to get out of that rat race,” Thornton said, as he eased into a chair across from her. A window was open just a crack, and on the air was the scent of young roses. It made his nose itch. Thornton hated leaving downtown LA, but what could he do? This situation was delicate, and he didn’t trust anyone else to handle it properly.

  Lorraine’s brother Van had been very careful in naming Thornton and his sister as executors of his estate. Both the attorney and Lorraine had been given letters from beyond the grave, personal missives written by Van. In these he had made his wishes clear: In regards to releasing the trust fund, they were to do what was best for Gina, and in the event of her demise, they were to take care of her son. But neither Thornton nor Lorraine could act without consent of the other party. Van’s goal had been to yoke Lorraine’s soft touch with Thornton’s fiscal conservatism.

  Of course, Gina didn’t know that money had been put aside for her and her child. Before she married Van, she’d signed a prenuptial agreement giving away her rights to his assets. Since Lauber had always been incredibly generous with her, she had no reason to question the arrangement. In fact, by saving her “allowance,” she’d even put aside money for her son’s education, which pleased her greatly. If anyone questioned her about the financial aspects of her marriage, Gina would point out that Erik was living a good life as Lauber’s “son.” The boy didn’t want for anything.

  Although he didn’t have grandparents in the picture or siblings, Erik had a wonderful life. Van made sure of it. As part of his sense of obligation, it was Van who had pushed Gina into getting her will done.

  When it came time for Gina to put hard decisions on paper, she quickly realized Lorraine couldn’t care for the boy. The two women talked frankly for many weeks, reviewing Gina’s options. Eventually, Gina decided that in the event of her death, her son should live with his father. The father he’d never met. The man who didn’t know he was a dad.

  “Why haven’t you told Mr. Detweiler about his son?” Thornton asked Gina. “You could be collecting child support.”

  To Thornton, it was all about the money. Gina’s secrecy made no practical sense.

  But Gina demurred. A niggling feeling told the attorney there was more to this story. He kept pressing Gina, but she wouldn’t change her mind. Finally, she threw up her hands and said, “Mr. Thornton, if you aren’t willing to leave this alone, I’ll tell Van to find me another lawyer.”

  That brought him to heel.

  Although he didn’t stop wondering. Information was power. What was Gina hiding? He’d sent a private investigator to look into Detective Chad Detweiler, but the man dug up nothing of interest.

  But Thornton had his suspicions.

  Each year during their annual review of her wishes and desires, Thornton asked Gina to reconsider. But she had stuck to her decision. If anything, she’d become more recalcitrant. “I expect to live a long life, but if I don’t, Erik would be in good hands.”

  When Thornton tried to weasel more information out of Lorraine, she’d simply stared at him for a very long time, before saying, “If Gina wishes to tell you more, she will. I won’t betray her confidences. I’m surprised you’d ask.”

  That warned him away from the topic. After all, Thornton had his own secrets to protect. Van Lauber didn’t know that Thornton had misappropriated most of Erik’s trust fund, using it as his own personal piggybank. So his concern wasn’t about Erik’s welfare. No, Thornton was protecting his own hide.

  This meeting with Lorraine had one purpose and one purpose only: Thornton needed to stall. He could not afford to let Lorraine Lauber release the trust fund money.

  But here she was, wanting to play the role of Lady Bountiful. She’d known the cop all of three days, but Lorraine was ready to write him a big, fat check.

  A check that would bounce higher than the Arch in St. Louis.

  “Come now, Thornton. Be reasonable. Detweiler’s finances are meager. There’s another child on the way. They’re living in cramped spaces. Why not at least release some of the money? It certainly would make life easier for Erik,” said Lorraine, in a peevish tone.

  Well, thought Thornton, of course releasing the funds looked logical to Lorraine. Letting go of that money wouldn’t make any difference to her.

  When he began his business, Van had borrowed half his start-up funds from his sister. She’d been incredibly patient, never asking to be reimbursed, and never adding pressure to him. When his company went public, he’d repaid his sister’s trust by giving her thirty percent of the stock. She was now a millionaire many times over.

  “Isn’t the point of the trust to help Erik? And doesn’t that mean helping his new parents?” asked Lorraine.

  Of course she was right.
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  But helping the Detweiler and Mrs. Lowenstein would put Thornton behind bars.

  If Thornton could wait her out, no one need ever know how much money was missing. Although Quinton handled Lorraine’s will, Thornton had been privy to it. He knew that Lorraine had put aside money for Erik. Thornton’s plan was genius. When she died, he’d simply swap out funds from Lorraine’s trust and move them into her brother’s. It would take a bit of fancy footwork with the books, but Thornton was up to the task. It was a Ponzi scheme of the first order. Unless someone hired a forensic expert, no one would be the wiser. At least not right away. By the time the swap was discovered, Thornton would be on a plane to the Bahamas, where he had a house on the beach.

  Actually, the switch should happen fairly soon. Lorraine grew weaker and weaker with each exacerbation of the disease. Thornton picked up on small nuances that announced her decline. Usually she offered him tea, but not today. Usually she shook his hand, but this time when he came into the room, she carefully tucked them into her lap. He knew why: She didn’t want them to betray her lack of muscle control.

  “Of course, the money is there to help Erik and his new family,” said Thornton reasonably. “But look at it this way, Lorraine. If we’ve misjudged the man’s character, we jeopardize Erik by releasing the money. Think about it: If Detweiler has both the money and the child, he can hire attorneys to fight us. It would be much, much harder to extract Erik from a bad situation. If we wait, we’ll know whether the boy is well-treated. If so, I’ll gladly write the check. But once we’ve opened the floodgates to the money, that’s like water over the dam. We can’t get it back.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “I do see your point.

  “Where is Mr. Detweiler?” asked Thornton.

  “With Erik at Disneyland.”

  “Just the two of them?”

  “Heavens, no. Net yet at least,” she said. As usual, she wore weariness like a shroud. Out of respect for her brother, she’d taken to wearing black, a curiously old-fashioned gesture, but one that seemed perfect for Lorraine’s sensibilities. However, the color was not good on her, sapping her face of its usual color. It made her look worse than usual. Of course, she had been stooped over for years, with her head jutting out at almost a right angle from her body. That couldn’t be healthy, having that crick in her neck. But beyond the MS and the obvious osteoporosis, she was even less animated than usual. Her demeanor had changed dramatically after her brother’s death. Thornton knew that the loss of her sibling had hit Lorraine like a body blow. Now, the upcoming loss of Erik was taking away Lorraine’s will to live.