Escape Artist efm-2

by Ed Ifkovic

  Though I drifted off, I suffered a nightmarish rest, images of the Fox River overflowing its banks, floods washing over Appleton. And there, glistening and gigantic, stood Jake Smuddie in his football togs, a bulwark against the raging river. Herr Professor stood nearby wagging a finger at me. Miss Hepplewhyte and Mr. McCaslin and Principal Jones and Homer Timm surrounded me. I woke in a sweat and struggled to fall back to sleep.

  I dreamed of the Deputy Sheriff Amos Moss sneaking back into the high school where he’d once been a student. Everyone had gone to Ryan High School. I dreamed I took refuge in my own house, but the house had been moved back to Ottumwa, Iowa, that hateful, coal-mining hamlet. Drunken revelers followed me home: “Oy yoy, sheeny. Run! Go on, run!” I couldn’t find a hiding place. “Christ killer.” Everywhere I ran in the hundreds of rooms-each one empty of furniture, each one a coffin-like box-there was no refuge. Finally I located my family, a frozen Sunday-best photograph of Jacob, Julia, and Fannie lined up and staring bleakly into the photographer’s lens. Where am I? I begged. I’m not in the picture. And no one answered. Why am I not in the picture? I woke again, gasping for air, and sat up. One thought knocked me back into my wet pillow. My home was behind enemy lines.

  But what did that mean?

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next day I was restless. At the city room I snapped at Miss Ivy, apologized, and the woman nodded, though occasionally she glanced my way, a puzzled look on her face. Matthias Boon, in and out of the office-“Chief of Police Stone has been talking to a drummer who’s back in town and yammered about the murder in a drunken stupor”-had edited my article on baseball down to an innocuous paragraph, which, I thought, made me sound like an idiot. A good part of the time I stared straight ahead, vacantly; and one time I spotted Sam Ryan peering at me, eyes narrowed. I tried to busy myself with a rewrite of a Milwaukee story: Lafollette and the wars at the state capital. Nothing like my own wars, I told myself.

  Byron Beverage walked in, a grin on his face. “Well, I saw your Harry Houdini getting on the train an hour ago. The most famous man to ever come out of Appleton had uncombed hair, a poorly-tied cravat, and, I swear, dried shaving cream on his left cheek.”

  I stayed quiet, typing with my two fingers.

  I waited for someone to comment on Houdini, but Miss Ivy started to ask her brother about an overdue account, some advertising from the Fox River Electric Car Company. “Again, they’re two weeks late,” she complained. “It throws everything off.”

  Sam rustled some papers. Every month they conducted the same conversation. Like clockwork. Within a day or two, Maxwell Pellum from the streetcar line would rush in, dropping shiny quarters on Miss Ivy’s desk, get a receipt, and leave. He never apologized. A routine. Like me and Fannie, warriors in muslin and gingham.

  I treated Esther to an afternoon coffee and a powdered doughnut at the Elm Tree Bakery, and she nonchalantly informed me her father had decided she was to marry. She shared the news so calmly it took me a second to understand how important this was. “Who?” I was flabbergasted. “Esther, this is a bolt out of the blue.”

  She sighed. “He’s chosen Leo Reiner. You don’t know him. He’s from Kenosha.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “And?”

  “He’s built like an ice house and will be bald at thirty.”

  “And you’re actually going to marry him?” Grim, flat out.

  “Well, in two years, yes.” She waited. “Well, I have to.” She had to? Of course, she did. Esther’s father, Rabbi Mendel Leitner, a redoubtable Old World cleric, believed in the East European tradition of a father choosing his children’s mates. Esther’s older sister, now saddled with a gaggle of colicky babies, had quietly acquiesced to her father’s dictates. Esther, vivacious American girl with her own Garibaldi-styled dresses, tennis rackets, and Gibson girl face, had no choice but to comply.

  “Slavery.” My severe declaration.

  “Please, Edna.” Esther, I sensed, had her own reservations but would never voice them. After all, she was not me. She was a small-town girl who wanted a grand home on Prospect Street-with electricity and an Alaska Opelite refrigerator. She wanted a dozen children in a crowded kitchen. She wanted to watch yeasty dough rising in a crock settled into a warm corner of the pantry. She was a girl who would define her life by the High Holy Days and the keeping of two sets of dishes.

  “Esther…”

  She twisted in her chair. “Be happy for me, Edna.”

  A long pause. “I am.”

  But I saw Esther’s lips tremble. I hurried to change the subject, mentioning Kathe’s abrupt leave-taking from the Ferber household.

  “Yes,” Esther acknowledged, “I heard all about it from Kathe. We’re still friendly.”

  “Why is she so hostile to me?”

  Esther broke into a big grin. “Edna, sometimes you don’t see yourself as others do.”

  “And what does that mean? I seem to have heard that before-and recently.”

  Esther waved her hand in the air. “You know you can be a little harsh with people…”

  I broke in. “The girl accused me of interfering with her already failed romance with Jake Smuddie.”

  “Well, you know Kathe is not so clever.”

  “Putting it mildly.”

  “But she can pick up how much contempt you have for her. And-now don’t get angry here, Edna-she thinks you have an infatuation with Jake Smuddie.”

  I fumed. “He left her and she practically named him the murderer.”

  “She’s feeling hurt…and deserted.”

  “Conditions she’s brought upon herself.” I tapped a finger on the table. “More than once she’s suggested she’s glad Frana is dead, as though death opened the doors for Jake to rediscover her massively-concealed charms.”

  Esther shrugged her shoulders and took a big bite of the warm cinnamon-dusted doughnut. “You have to accept that Kathe is now your sworn enemy.”

  “She’s chosen me because she needs an enemy now.”

  “And you’re the girl reporter.”

  I whispered, “I’m starting to hate that expression.”

  Esther’s eyes twinkled. “Why? You use it all the time.”

  “So Kathe has been chatting with you?” A hint of betrayal. The two pretty girls in cahoots.

  “We met at Kamp’s. I was buying bon bons. You know, we talked about Frana, and I think she’s sorry more than you give her credit for. Edna, nobody wants their friends killed.”

  “Are you sure?” Bitingly.

  Esther bravely made eye contact. “Which is why people have trouble liking you, Edna.”

  “Houdini likes me.”

  “That’s because he knows how to escape.” She said the words so innocently. We looked at each other, eyes bright, and we both started to laugh out loud. We laughed for a long time.

  For a moment I wondered whether Esther had heard the story of Frana’s pregnancy. I wanted to tell her but I thought of Jake’s sobbing, the mournful way he said Frana’s name. I kept still.

  “Seriously,” Esther was saying, “Kathe told me something I didn’t know. Frana was having some real trouble at the high school. Kathe didn’t know what. She’d been called into Mr. Timm’s office lots of times and reprimanded. Once, passing by, she thought she heard Frana crying out of control. When she asked Frana about it, Frana only said that she was scared of Mr. Timm. Like we all were, you know. But he was always calling her into his office on some stupid little pretense. And she didn’t like the way he treated her. He singled her out.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.” She deliberated. “I guess Frana’s uncle blamed the school for Frana’s behavior. You know, all those fantasies she had. I heard that when Mr. Powell sent her father a letter telling Frana to stop pestering the actors at the Lyceum, the uncle waved the letter in front of Mr. Timm and blamed the teachers for putting ideas in her head.”

  �
��That’s ridiculous.”

  “So Mr. Timm felt he had to yell at her.”

  “What did Mr. Timm say to her?”

  “She wouldn’t tell Kathe. But Kathe believed Mr. Timm had it in for her.”

  “That makes no sense.” I took a bite of my doughnut. “Are you sure it was a disciplinary problem?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “Mr. Timm is nobody’s friend, Esther. He hates the students. God knows what makes that man tick. He…” I paused. “Frana probably tried to smile her way out of…” Another pause. “Oh, my God. You don’t think…” My eyes got wide. “Is it possible…”

  “What?”

  “Could he have…”

  Esther gulped. “For God’s sake, Edna, he’s a scary, humorless…”

  “He’s a man to trust.” As I said the words, I remembered my father’s words. “Yes, a severe man, but who knows what sweet talk a man can muster up.”

  “Well, I don’t believe it.” Flat out, clipped. “It’s impossible.”

  “Well, neither do I, frankly. But who knows.”

  Early on, I’d considered the men at the high school, but those dull, plodding men, locked into the routines of the school, seemed so far from Frana’s fantasy world. Part of me never trusted Mr. McCaslin because he always seemed to be performing. He was always darting off to Milwaukee. Principal Jones, the grieving widower, seemed too…too sad. But Homer Timm. He told his brother he was headed back East. Escaping. It was all so…impossible. Dismissible. But the idea took over, grew; and then, in a lightning flash, it made bizarre sense. Homer Timm? The lonely man away from his family. My father’s words came to me: The key to the murder is in that mysterious passageway.

  “I have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Well, you’re in a hurry to get there,” Esther said. “And you’re making no sense now.”

  “Lately I’ve been very good at that.”

  Late afternoon the high school was nearly deserted, the cacophony of student voices gone from the hard-polished halls. I passed a few straggling students rehearsing a skit in one classroom, and Principal Jones was writing at his desk. He looked up, puzzled. “Miss Ferber, may I help you?” At his side Miss Hepplewhyte looked curious, but I waved and mumbled something about a follow-up story on Houdini.

  As I walked past, I glanced over my shoulder. I saw Miss Hepplewhyte eying me suspiciously. No matter. Miss Hepplewhyte viewed the world with distrust. It gave her purpose in a universe cluttered with rosy-cheeked schoolchildren.

  I turned the corner, headed toward the auditorium where I’d spent so many delightful hours rehearsing plays and my oratory. I’d won first place in the state competition my last year at the school and had returned home at midnight from Madison to a massive bonfire and my protesting body carried high on footballers’ shoulders, one of them being Jake Smuddie’s. Those were intoxicating years at Ryan, and I roamed the hallways as the Close and Personal Editor for the Clarion.

  I skirted past the library where Miss Dunne was berating a student worker. The auditorium was eerily quiet. Most of the vast room was dark, though here and there gaslight flickered. I paused in front of the three stairs that led to the landing and the janitor’s storeroom. As a student, I scurried up and down while working on scenery, spouting lines, laughing and chatting with friends. Sometimes a student would rush up there for a pail or broom. No one lingered there. No one discovered that secret storeroom. Except the murderer.

  A murderer who knew the school intimately.

  I remembered an episode in high school when the football team hid on that landing, some sort of practical joke. I tried to remember: Was Jake Smuddie there?

  I stepped onto the dimly-lit stairs but backed down; I needed light. I found a lantern on a shelf, struck a match and lit it, and the swaying lantern reminded me of how nervous I was. At the top of the landing I stepped into the janitor’s storeroom and surveyed the orderly display of August Schmidt’s domain: brooms and brushes and pails and wash rags and soap, everything neat and tidy, a careful man’s prideful organization.

  A patina of dust lay on the surfaces now. Mr. Schmidt had abandoned this room, of course. Bending down, I examined the latched panel. Partially blocked by a small table covered with paint cans, it was unobtrusive. I slid the table over. Simply by undoing the small wooden latch, I was able to push open the door, exposing the unused storeroom with the discarded furniture. It was, I told myself, just a door in a wall. Nothing more. How simple! Scarcely hidden. Actually, not hidden at all. There was no Edgar Allen Poe intrigue here, no need for M. Auguste Dupin’s ratiocinative process. Certainly no locked chamber of horrors. No, it was simply that no one cared. No mystery.

  Stooping a bit, I walked inside the musty, secret room. I placed the lantern on the dusty desk and looked around. I turned the knob of the outside door, opened it a crack, and for a brief second peered into the final hallway of Frana Lempke. I feared Miss Hepplewhyte, marching through on military surveillance, might spot me peering out that door; but no one was there. The hallway was quiet. How easy it was to spy on students passing by! I shut the door and heard it latch, locking. Caleb Stone and Amos Moss had investigated the forgotten room. Or had they? How thoroughly, these two inexperienced marshals? I doubted whether they’d read Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, as I had. Twice. Or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Or, I realized, Israel Zangwell’s thrilling Big Bow Mystery, with that dreaded locked-door intrigue. There was always something left behind. I’d learned that from those dark gothic writers.

  I looked.

  Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of the Hansom Cab. What was the mystery of the locked room? I owned that gripping detective romance. Perhaps I’d read it again. A literary roadmap to a solution.

  Back in the janitor’s storeroom, the panel shut behind me and latched, the table slid back in place, the lantern suddenly went out, and I yelped as the small room was plunged into darkness. No matter. I was near the stairs. For a moment I stood there, quiet. I could hear someone in the hallway. Homer Timm was humming a tune. No, he was singing. Worse, he seemed to be having a good time.

  Ida, sweet as apple cider

  Sweeter than all I know.

  Come out in the silvery moonlight,

  Of love we’ll whisper, so soft now.

  God! That dour man was enjoying himself.

  Slowly, I stepped onto the top stair but I stumbled, knocking the lantern against the wall. The noise echoed in the space. I fell to my knees and then, breathless, I sat on the top step, regaining my composure. As I balanced myself to stand, my fingers brushed a piece of paper, so tiny I almost missed it, but I wrapped my fingers around it. I slipped down the stairs, and in the light I found myself staring at a cigar label, dusty and torn. A Grand Avenue cigar, a common enough brand, I knew, for my father had once smoked it-until blindness robbed him of the pleasure. I tucked it into the pocket of my dress. Moving, I tore the hem of my long dress, which had got caught on a jagged piece of molding. I frowned. I hated sewing and I knew I couldn’t ask Fannie to accommodate me. Not, at least, for a few more days.

  I replaced the lantern and followed what I assumed was the path the murderer and Frana had taken, moving around the edge of the stage and toward the back door that led to small wooded copse where students sometimes studied on warm days. In fact, I read a good part of Les Miserables in the shade of one of the sycamores there.

  Frana and friend had followed this route without being seen. Someone knew the auditorium would be empty then.

  I opened the door and stepped out into sunlight, disoriented. I reached in my pocket and extracted the cigar wrapping and fingered it. Probably every other man in Appleton smoked Grand Avenues, a popular Milwaukee cigar, save the pipe and cigarette smokers. Many teachers at the high school did, and even the principal. Maybe even August Schmidt. And Homer Timm. I’d seen him with such a cigar, the tip of one often visible in his breast pocket. I thought of him singing that awful tu
ne in the hallway…

  “Miss Ferber!”

  I screamed, spun around. There I was, face to face with Homer Timm, and for a second I thought I’d imagined it-conjured him up with my demonic thoughts. But no, the man stood there, feet away, with one of those loathsome cigars actually planted between his teeth.

  “You startled me,” I stammered.

  “I stepped out to enjoy the afternoon and have a smoke. I didn’t expect to see you, Miss Ferber, emerging like a moth into this abundant light.”

  “I was just being. ” I almost said girl reporter but thought the words too lame and questionable.

  Homer Timm puffed on his cigar, but he never took his eyes off me. He spotted the cigar wrapper in my hand. “What’s that, Miss Ferber? Evidence?”

  “Evidence?”

  A wry grin. “Are you still doing Caleb Stone’s job?”

  “I thought I’d trace the route of the…you know…” I faltered. His steely eyes, unblinking, alarmed me.

  “A young girl getting too nosy, perhaps.” He puffed on the cigar.

  “I was curious.”

  “And what did you discover?”

  “Nothing.” I tucked the cigar wrapping back into my pocket.

  “A cigar wrapping?”

  I pointed behind me. “I found it at the top of the stairs.”

  “I wonder how it got there.” He stepped close.

  I backed up. “I have no idea.”

  “But you have a suspicion?”

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t lie very well, Miss Ferber. Usually you’re so forthright.”