Cold Morning (7 page)

I sighed, sipped my coffee. It was cold. “But he fell for her.”

“Yeah. Big-time. A lummox, that boy.”

“What did you mean by her looking at the horizon?”

“Well, the one time I seen her I asked her why she moved out of Chicago. She said something about being in Flemington for pay dirt.”

“Meaning?” Echoes of my own conversation with her in the café bounced in my head.

“Well, at the time I thought she meant because, you know, everybody coming here to make money because of the trial. The hotel adding staff. Like the boys in the street selling souvenirs, like those little wooden ladders that look like the one against the Lindbergh house. Little boys hawking them on corners. That sort of thing. Lots of jobs open in the restaurants and rooming houses. Silver dollars jingling in pockets.”

“But that's not your final thought?”

She shook her head. “No, I felt she was up to something. You know how you get a feeling in your gut?”

“I did, too.” I tapped my fingers on the table. “This was a woman with a purpose.”

She stared into my eyes. “I don't understand.”

“Well, frankly, I don't either. My gut, I suppose.” Idly, I stirred the coffee with a spoon. “You said Cody Lee is innocent.”

Her voice took on force. She leaned in and I smelled her stale breath, dry, a hint of rosewater on her neck. “I told the sheriff, but no one listens to me. Cody Lee and Annabel battled at the café around six that night, so he storms off, but the manager and this other waitress, Peggy, they told the police Annabel was there till seven, her shift over, when she went home. Seven, Miss Ferber.”

“So?”

“They
seen
her till that time. So Cody Lee was back at the farmhouse
before
seven, twenty minutes or so before, riled up, yes, but
there
. I remember looking at the grandfather clock in the parlor when he come in, his face red, his neck muscles throbbing, angry as all get out. But I made him some root tea, and the two of us sat in that parlor and listened to the seven o'clock news come on the radio. In fact, we sat there for a couple hours. I remember him chuckling over
Fibber McGee and Molly
until Cody, he—he tunes in Paul Whiteman.” Her eyes got moist. “He likes the soft music, he does.” At ten we had more tea and some cookies I baked and we turned in. He
never
left the house, Miss Ferber.”

“So he couldn't have murdered Annabel.”

Her palm slapped the table. “Not 'less he be in two places at one time.”

“You told this to the sheriff?”

She nodded rapidly. “And he said it ain't proof. Just me, a mother lying to protect a murderous son.”

“No one else saw him?”

“The Myersons are old, asleep in their room on the other side of the farmhouse. No, just us two.”

I closed my eyes. “My God.”

She waited a moment, then reached out to grab the back of my hand, squeezing it. “Do you believe me, Miss Ferber?”

I said nothing for long time, simply stared back into that lined, horrible face, with unblinking eyes. Finally, tilting back my head, I told her, “Yes, actually, I do.”

And I did—all the inklings of something amiss with Annabel Biggs gathered together like iron filings drawn to a magnet, and I knew then that this old woman could not lie to me.

Her eyes teared up and she sat back, her shoulders sagging. “Thank you.” She drew in her breath. “My blessed Jesus. At night, in bed, I stare into the darkness and feel—helpless.”

“Wait, Mrs. Thomas. I'm not sure what I can do.”

She glanced up at the clock over the soda fountain and started. “I have to get back. I have to see Cody Lee. The sheriff…” She stopped. “Miss Ferber, will you come with me?”

I hesitated. “I don't think…”

“Someone besides me, Miss Ferber. My boy needs to see somebody besides me. They gave us a court lawyer but no one else.”

I nodded. “Yes, I will.”

Again she tapped the back of my wrist. “A blessing from God, you are.”

“Yes,” I mumbled, “folks who know me are already engraving that on my tombstone.”

She took me seriously. “They should.”

I drew my tongue into my cheek. “Probably sooner than later. My enemies.”

“You have no enemies.” Said loudly, simply.

“Of course I do. That's how I know I'm alive.”

She eyed me curiously as she dug into the patent-leather purse she'd deposited on the seat. I held up my hand. “Let me,” I told her, placing two quarters on the table.

Back at the jail, the sheriff hadn't returned—“Delayed, you know,” Deputy Low muttered, then added sarcastically, “There
is
a murder trial going on, you know.” But he'd telephoned and told Low to allow Cody Lee's mother a good half hour.

Hovey Low eyed me suspiciously. “But you was just here, lady.”

“Observant,” I noted. “I like that in an officer of the law.”

“So what do
you
want?”

“I'm a friend of Cody Lee's mother.” I pointed to the woman who nodded at me. “I'm assuming I can visit as well.” I took a stride forward, as though to push past him, and the man, stymied, backed up, actually half-bowed at me.

We sat in a small, windowless room, a long table and three chairs, the walls painted a dreary deck green that must have induced immediate confession, the door open so Hovey Low could sit in a hallway chair, tilted up, his feet on the doorjamb, yards away but feigning indifference.

The deputy led Cody Lee in, leg shackles hobbling his steps.

Cody Lee Thomas had an unshaven chin and uncombed hair in need of a trim. Dressed in green prison fatigues, institutional slippers on his stockinged feet, he was an overgrown boy, a heap of a lad dumped into a chair. His eyes alarmed me: dull gray, shadowy, drained of life. Here was a man felled by events he couldn't really grasp, the stolid ox lumbering in a meadow startled by the sudden rainfall. An ungenerous description, I freely admit, but not an unsympathetic one: Cody Lee Thomas was the victim of a malevolent god that spat him out and then assumed he'd graze in a faraway field. He looked like the neighborhood boy you always liked but never left alone with the scissors. He smiled wanly at his mother who made a big show of introducing me.

“Her name is Edna Ferber.”

I realized that Cora Lee had no idea who I was, and probably assumed I was a field reporter for one of the New York dailies—which I was, sort of—or a dilettante visitor to the trial, one of the powdered women in furs and diamonds whose drivers tooled up to the Union Hotel, women who did lunch and murder trials for diversion. She'd never heard of me. Now ordinarily I'd be a tad offended—after all, I was the author of
So Big
, which had won the Pulitzer, and I was the fairy-tale godmother of the hugely popular stage musical
Show Boat
—but…so be it…vanity had no place in this awful room.

He mumbled a greeting at me, perplexed as to why his mother had dragged in the middle-aged woman with the three strands of pearls, the careful spit-curl perm, and an ostentatious fur coat that was one season out of style—at least on Madison Avenue.

“She believes that you are innocent,” Cora Lee told him.

He grinned at me. “I am.”

“I know.” My own emphatic words startled me.

His face got cloudy. “How, ma'am?”

That stopped me. “Because I believe your mother cannot lie.”

He nodded quickly, agreeing.

A grunt from the hallway, Hovey Low marking time.

“We only have a half hour,” I said quickly. “Talk to me about Annabel Biggs.”

His eyes softened, his lips trembled, and for a moment he closed his eyes. “I don't know what to say.”

“You cared for her?”

He nodded. “Yeah. A lot. I mean, we only went out a bunch of times but we…you know, we laughed a lot. She was
fun
.” A heartbeat. “For a while.”

“But you fought with her.”

He bit his lip. “Yeah, a lot. She was a wild cat, that one. At the end. I mean, out of the blue she said the fun and games was over.”

“But why?”

He looked puzzled and scrunched up his face. “You know, it was real strange. She said something like—‘The trial is starting and I gotta focus. Got no time for you.'”

“That makes little sense.”

He shrugged. “That's all she talked about. The trial. The kidnapping—the murder. That is, when she had a little too much gin at the Oak Tavern, the roadhouse out on Elm Road.”

“Tell me what she said.”

His hands shook as he lit a cigarette, for a moment watching the smoke rings drift upward. His fingernails were broken, dark, ragged, the fingertips yellowed from nicotine. Surprisingly slender hands on so big a man—and I shuddered, imaging those long graceful fingers around Annabel's neck.

“She said she was here for the trial. A little secretive. I asked her why she left a good-paying job in Chicago—she said it was a fancy-schmancy hotel there—and she winked at me. ‘Big money.' So I said, ‘How so?' I mean, a job as a waitress is about the same.”

“And what did she say?”

Listening closely, her hands resting in her lap, Cora Lee echoed my words, “What did she say?”

“Most times nothing, but then she'd brag about some big payoff. One time she whispered, ‘Lindbergh, Lindbergh' like a song you got stuck in your head, but when I asked her what was what, she clammed up. But once she said that blackmail is a tool that gotta be used like a pointed gun. That made no sense.”

“Maybe it makes a lot of sense,” I said.

He glanced at his mother. “I dunno.”

“Annabel Biggs came here for reasons other than generous tips,” I added.

Cora Lee looked over my shoulder into the hallway where Hovey Low watched us. “She was up to something.”

Cody Lee went on. “She could be loud and noisy and pushy and…and she, you know, liked to bat her eyelids at guys. But it was all a game. I think.”

My heart raced. “But talking of Lindbergh? A payoff? But what?”

“Yeah, but she never got to talking about it much. Too much gin and she falls asleep in the pickup.” His mouth flew open. “Wait. I remember—laughing, real silly, she said something about letters. A cousin's letters. ‘Secrets from the pot at the end of the rainbow.' Her words. Made no sense to me. Strange, no?”

“We ain't gonna ever know,” Cora Lee interjected, her voice weary.

I sat back, thought about his words. “But it does confirm my suspicion that she was ready for some windfall she thought she'd get.”

Cora Lee spat out, “What she got was being strangled.”

His mother spoke the words so quickly that Cody Lee winced, his shoulders sagged.

Looking at him as he sat slumped over, his face wide with confusion, I realized how some woman might find him irresistible. The mooncalf eyes, the wispy hair slipping over a high forehead, the sudden dimples, the sheer bulk of him—the boy in the man's body, but still harboring a child's air of wonder. A seductive, lethal combination, perhaps a very real allure to a pernicious woman like Annabel Biggs, the local boy with the keys to a pickup. Some men were like chocolate sundaes, consumed with gluttonous delight but then forgotten when you left the ice cream parlor. Cody Lee Thomas was the perennial huckleberry boy bringing the cow in at sunset. Annabel, bored, wanted him to take her to the dance.

Hovey Low surprised us, standing in the doorway and rapping impatiently. “Time.” He pointed to a wristwatch. “The court lawyer gotta come later. Time.”

Cody Lee's mother was in a rush to leave, slipping on her coat and gloves, kissing him on the cheek but turning away quickly. She disappeared into the hallway, but I stood there, flummoxed. I trailed after Hovey Low, watching him lock Cody Lee in a cell after unlocking the leg shackles. He opened the door to let Cora Lee slip out into the main room. Suddenly Hovey touched my sleeve, an impish grin on his face. “Come.”

He led me back down the corridor, past Cody Lee's jail cell, where I came face-to-face with two Jersey state troopers sitting on chairs. They didn't look happy to spot Hovey and the confused woman at his elbow.

“Look.” Hovey Lee pointed past the indignant troopers.

I found myself staring into a small cell where Bruno Richard Hauptmann stood, looking back at me, his hands gripping the bars of the cell, his face glaring at us, stony and severe. He'd been holding an unlit cigarette through the bars, waiting for a light, but now drew back his arm. The cell was brilliantly lit, perpetual daylight, and I knew the lights were never turned off. He lived under that shrill sunshine. Hovey chatted briefly with a man he identified as Hugo Stockburger. “Speaking German,” Hovey told me. “If Bruno says anything in kraut talk, he writes it down.” Hugo nodded at us. Hauptmann did, in fact, say something I didn't catch—a low, guttural sound.

He watched me, curious. Our eyes held, and I stared into the narrow, triangular face, that shock of muddy blond hair, neatly parted, slicked back. The high chiseled cheekbones. But what mesmerized me in that awful instant were the deep-set, blue-gray eyes: an awful intelligence there, caginess perhaps, willful and determined, a little cocksure. He was searching for something in my face. A tight, muscular body, sinewy and lithe, he had a raw masculine sensuality. The movement of his arm raised up, grasping the bars, seemed a deliberate calculation. A man who believed he could charm the devil, this one. The hypnotist in prison garb. I caught my breath, stunned by the deadly virility. I pivoted away, bumping into a wall, my hand reaching out to secure myself. I turned to catch Hovey's amused eye, which I deeply resented.

The state troopers grumbled as they stood, stepping in front of the prisoner.

I staggered out, Hovey's stupid laugher following me into the front room. Cora Lee was nowhere in sight.