The Darkness Knows (17 page)

“So Mr. Hart seems to be arranging a benefit,” Vivian said, trying to keep up with Charlie's long-legged strides as they made their way back to the car. She'd fallen several paces behind, and he showed no signs of slowing. Vivian winced with pain with every jarring step on the uneven concrete. She'd have to remember to wear more sensible shoes if Charlie insisted on more of these nature hikes.

Charlie strode ahead without slowing his gait.

“Charlie,” Vivian said. “What do you think?”

He finally turned to her as he reached the driver's side door, the car keys already in his hand. “I think this is a dead end,” he said.

“A dead end? But the letter that I saw Marjorie with, the one that disappeared, was from the foundling home.” She followed him to the driver's side and stood staring up at him, hands on hips. “There's something to that. You said so yourself.”

“You heard Sister Bernadine. She doesn't know a thing about it.” He glanced off into the distance.

“And you don't think she could be lying?”

His head snapped back to her. “Lying?”

“She's a nun, but she's also a human being.” Vivian raised her eyebrows, and she could tell by the incredulous look on his face that he may be a detective that saw the worst of human nature, but he was likely also a good Catholic boy who simply couldn't fathom such a terrible thing as a nun telling untruths. “People lie, Charlie. All the time. Especially if it's in their best interest to do so.”

Charlie stared at her. He looked about to say something but then just grunted noncommittally. He opened the driver's side door and slid in. She stood outside for a few moments, staring at him through the glass. He looked straight ahead, drumming impatient fingers on the steering wheel.

“Stubborn mule,” Vivian muttered and grudgingly made her way to the other side of the car.

“We only came here to rule this angle out,” he said after she'd slid into the passenger's seat and slammed the door. “And we've done that.”

Vivian nodded, deep in thought. Something still niggled at the back of her mind. Something told her they shouldn't disregard the foundling home, not entirely. “But that letter I saw Marjorie with was from the foundling home,” Vivian insisted again. “If Sister Bernadine wasn't lying outright, then at the very least she knows more than she told us.”

Charlie shrugged. “It must have been a fund-raising letter,” he said. “Or maybe it was something else entirely, written on stationery that only resembled that of the foundling home.”

Vivian shook her head but had no evidence to back up her conviction. The orphaned children had left the yard, and the large building seemed suddenly lifeless. She watched leaves rustle about the lawn in the slight breeze. It was another brilliant late October day, the sky blue, the sun bright and warm on her skin.

“You've been to see Sister Bernadine before,” Vivian said. “She said that she had told you about the records being confidential. Why?”

He didn't answer immediately. Vivian could tell by the set of his jaw that he was angry with her. She was a nuisance. She was complicating the investigation.

“Another case,” he said, his voice clipped.

“Involving what?”

“A client who had been adopted from the home as an infant and was looking for their birth parents.” She watched his jaw clench and unclench as he looked off into the distance.

He was trying to keep that stony, I-don't-care-about-anyone-or-anything expression, and he was almost succeeding, but she could see him struggle with some emotion. It wasn't anger exactly, but perhaps anger tinged with something else. Sadness? Charlie fidgeted in his seat, gripping the steering wheel with both hands before letting it go and refusing to meet her gaze.

She should let the matter drop, Vivian thought. Change the subject. He clearly didn't want to talk about it. But there was something to this. She knew it. She could feel it in the marrow of her bones, and she had to press just a little harder before giving up. Her life may depend on it. “It wasn't just
any
client, was it?” Vivian asked, probing for anything that might make Charlie share what he knew.

He glanced at her and then immediately back out the windshield. “Client files are confidential,” he said shortly, mimicking Sister Bernadine.

“Was it Peggy Hart?” Vivian asked.

He looked at her, one eyebrow raised quizzically. “Peggy Hart?”

Vivian shrugged. “She doesn't look anything like either of her parents. Mr. Hart is on the board of the foundling home, which you have to admit is a strange choice of charity affiliation for someone like him.” She realized that her reasons for harboring this theory were woefully thin.

Charlie frowned at her theory. “It wasn't Peggy Hart,” he said, a note of finality in his voice. “We really shouldn't have come here, Vivian. This was a wild-goose chase.”

“Well, we have to do something to try to figure out what happened to Marjorie.”

“No,
we
don't.”

Vivian rolled her eyes. “My life is in danger, remember? I'm not just going to stay home and darn my socks—not when I can go out and
do
something.”

Charlie sighed, removed his hat, and ran a hand through his thick, blond hair. A wave flopped over his forehead, and he impatiently pushed it back into place. “I'm the private investigator here. I'm the one with the experience.”

Vivian crossed her arms across her chest. It sounded to her like he was trying to convince himself of that fact as much as her. “So that's why you're angry? I'm horning in on your territory, and you feel threatened?” she asked.

“Don't be ridiculous,” he said. “This is a dangerous business. If someone's going to get hurt, it's going to be me.”

“I'm not going to get hurt,” she said under her breath.

Charlie turned to her suddenly, eyes blazing. “Someone's been murdered,” he said. “Murdered with a capital
M
, as Harvey Diamond would say. You've already been threatened…shot at, for God's sake. What makes you think that whoever it was won't want to finish the job?”

Vivian lowered her head. He was right, of course. She was being impetuous and reckless. She wasn't qualified to do this kind of work.

“I just want this to be over with,” she said and felt her lower lip tremble.

Charlie put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to look him in the eye.

“I promise you, this will be over soon,” he said softly. “I know what I'm doing.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“You have to trust me.”

“I know,” she repeated.

He looked into her eyes for a few seconds longer, then released his grip. He turned back to the wheel and put the key in the ignition, and the car's engine roared to life.

“I'm taking you home,” he announced.

“Home? Why?” Vivian couldn't hide the disappointment in her voice. The last place she wanted to be right now was home, cooped up with her mother and her thoughts all day.

“I have things to take care of,” he answered.

Vivian sighed. “You're angry with me,” she said in a small voice.

“Yes,” he agreed without looking at her.

Vivian looked down at her hands. “Well, I'm not sorry for tricking you into taking me along,” she said.

“What a surprise,” he said, putting the car into gear.

Vivian bit her lip and watched the unappealing neighborhood float by outside the window.

“You're going to Marjorie's apartment,” she ventured.

“Yes,” he said.

“Then I'm going with you.”

“You most certainly are not,” he replied firmly.

They drove on in silence, but only for a moment. Charlie hadn't bothered to skirt the worst of the Near West Side this time. Too distracted, too angry with her to bother with her delicate female sensibilities, she thought. The area had always been rough, but its population had swelled significantly during the Depression. Chicago was slowly recovering from those terrible times, but the streets in this part of town still swarmed with the drunken, the hapless, those who had lost everything—or never had anything to begin with. The car rolled past a dollar-a-day flophouse optimistically called the Starr Hotel, and Vivian eyed a man passed out on the curb in front, mouth open in a snore and an empty bottle lolling from his hand. Vivian looked away and crossed her arms.

“My mother will be suspicious if I come back without a dress. She knows how excited I am about this date with Graham.”

Charlie's eyes narrowed. “I thought you said she wouldn't care,” he said.

“I lied. People lie.” Vivian sighed dramatically and looked wistfully out the side window. The scenery was grim: gray concrete, gray factories belching gray smoke. Definitely not the Chicago she knew and loved.

“If you're suggesting I take you the ladies' department of Marshall Field's right now—”

“I'm not suggesting anything,” Vivian said, letting an edge creep into her voice. “I was just wondering what I'd tell her if she asked about it.”

“You'll think of something. You're a bright girl.” Charlie said, the tone of his voice making it clear he wasn't paying her a compliment.

Vivian turned and fixed Charlie with a determined stare. “I can help you, you know,” she said, willing him to see her sincerity. “I can help you look for clues at Marjorie's apartment. I was the one that knew her, remember?”

“What you can do is get in my way,” he said.

Charlie turned the wheel abruptly and steered the car to the curb, shoving the gearshift into neutral. For one terrifying moment, Vivian thought he meant for her to get out and walk home. She glanced at the sidewalk outside—gray concrete, its surface zigzagged with cracks, trash strewn about. Two men ambled slowly down the sidewalk in their direction, both looking considerably down at the heels. One carried a liquor bottle, and as Vivian watched, he brought it to his lips and took a long swig without breaking stride. She swallowed and opened her mouth to begin her mea culpa to Charlie. There was no way she'd leave the car in this neighborhood, even if that meant she would have to apologize and let Charlie have his way.

“I'll be right back.” Charlie leaped from the car before Vivian could respond. She sat back in her seat, arms crossed over her chest. Charlie jogged across the street to a telephone booth. So he was making a call, she thought. To whom? Maybe he was ratting her out to her mother.
Mrs. Witchell, your daughter is not playing nicely. She needs to come home now
. Vivian smiled to herself. Her mother had certainly gotten a few of those calls when Vivian was small. She had never been a fan of playing nicely.

The call was brief, only a few moments. She watched Charlie stride across the deserted street back toward the Packard, his face grim.

“It's your lucky day,” he announced, sliding in the driver's seat.

“My lucky day?” she asked, eyeing the men on the sidewalk. They were still approaching and were so close now that she could see that the smaller one had blue eyes.

Charlie didn't respond. He put the car into gear and drove off, tires squealing.

Marjorie Fox had lived in an apartment on the second floor of a solid brick duplex on the North Side right behind Wrigley Field. So close, in fact, that if she'd stood on her roof (something Vivian could not picture the woman doing), she could have reached up and caught a home run ball as it soared over the left field bleachers. Vivian gazed at the rear of the structure as they turned from Clark onto Waveland. There were no cheers now; the season was over.

She glanced up at the back of the large wooden scoreboard, having a sudden, clear memory of a hand materializing from one of the little doors built within to change the numbers when a team scored. She'd thought it was magic. Then again, she'd been ten years old at the time. She'd been inside Wrigley Field only that once, when her father had taken her. She could still feel the salty stickiness of Cracker Jack between her molars.

“…thought maybe this was their year. Then they went and got themselves swept in four.”

“Hmm?”

Charlie pointed to the large brick building beside them. “Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs.” When she didn't respond he added, “Baseball. The World Series.”

“Right,” she said, rolling her eyes at his condescension. She didn't care much for baseball, but she'd heard about the Cubs' dismal showing in the Series this year. They'd been swept twice by the Yankees in the past decade—once in '32 and again a few weeks ago. She'd glanced over the somber headlines when it had happened. Everyone had been in an uproar over a couple of lost baseball games.

“I guess there's just no stopping that Gehrig. He's a force of nature.”

“Uh-huh,” she said automatically, unable to add much to a conversation about baseball but glad to see that Charlie's mood had improved. He was talking to her again at least. That was something after another thirty minutes of unyielding silence on the way here. She glanced at him as he parked the car directly across from Marjorie's building.

“This isn't where I pictured someone like Marjorie Fox would live,” Vivian said.

Charlie considered the building for a moment and then turned back to her. “Maybe she was a fan.”

He pulled open the front door of the building with ease, his eyebrows rising in surprise at finding it unlocked. Vivian was disappointed—she'd been looking forward to seeing how he would manage to talk their way into the building. They crept past the doors of the first floor apartments, the floorboards squeaking under their feet. Vivian could make out the mumble of a radio in the apartment to the right. The distinct smell of boiled cabbage assaulted her nostrils, and she thought with some amusement that perhaps the building wasn't as posh as she'd first assumed. She glanced at Charlie, and he motioned her silently up the staircase.

“How are we going to get in?” Vivian whispered, eyeing the locked front door of Marjorie's apartment and terrified that everyone in the building had heard them ascend the creaky staircase. But there hadn't been a sound from the other tenants. The radio still murmured reassuringly from the apartment on the floor below. Ill-matching wallpaper covered the holes on the wall where the gaslights had once been installed, she noted.

In lieu of an answer, Charlie pulled a small metal cylinder out of his inside jacket pocket and bent at the waist, pulling a long, thin pin out of the cylinder. He inserted it into the lock and smoothly flicked his wrist clockwise. After an audible click in the mechanism, Charlie glanced up at her and smirked. “Like this.”

Vivian glanced around the hallway. “Very nice,” she whispered. “But I meant, how are we going to get in without getting caught?” She trained a wary eye on the closed door opposite Marjorie's apartment, certain that it would swing open at any second to produce a put-out neighbor.

“Don't worry about that,” Charlie said. He turned the doorknob and tapped the door open with the toe of his shoe, gesturing for Vivian to enter the apartment ahead of him. “Ladies first.”

Vivian hesitated. Through the open door she could see the remnants of a life that had ended abruptly. Feeble, gray daylight filtered through the heavy blue damask curtains in Marjorie's sitting room. A teacup perched on a doily on a side table next to a fussy, high-backed chair, and a magazine lay open next to the teacup, upside down, spine splayed wide. The apartment was relatively neat, except for a few dirty dishes stacked in the sink and an overflowing ashtray near the telephone in the nook a short distance down the hall. Marjorie had just left home one morning and never come back, Vivian thought. It had been as simple as that.

She shook away a sudden chill and stepped across the threshold. She turned to see Charlie quietly close the door and flick the bolt to relock it.

“So where do we start?” she asked, glancing about the room. “What are we looking for?”

Charlie shrugged. “You'll know it when you see it. Right? Isn't that why you're here to help?”

Vivian nodded, but now that they were here, she wasn't so sure that she would.

She walked over to the side table where the teacup sat and bent to pull the cord on the Tiffany-esque green-shaded lamp that rested there. Black smudges covered the beaded brass pull cord. She glanced down at the table. There were matching black smudges on the handle of the teacup “What's that?” she asked, pointing.

“The police dusted for fingerprints,” Charlie said from somewhere behind her.

“Do you think they found anything suspicious?”

“I doubt it,” he said. Vivian turned and saw Charlie absently pick up a magazine from the top of the expensive-looking floor-model radio in the corner, leaf through the publication, and drop it unceremoniously back down. It was this week's
Radio Guide
with the blurb about her and Graham being Radioland's newest couple.

“Why not?” she asked.

Charlie crouched in front of the radio and opened the walnut-paneled door, riffling through the contents with a practiced hand as he spoke. “Fingerprints are generally only useful if you know who you're looking for.” He held up a piece of paper and studied it before tossing back into the cabinet and closing the door.

“Couldn't they match the fingerprints they found here against people from the station? Just to rule suspects out?” she asked.

“They could and they might, but finding a matching fingerprint here really doesn't rule out anyone she already knows.”

“Why not?” she asked again, feeling stupid at her ignorance of police procedure.

“Mrs. Fox might have invited any acquaintance from the station over at any time. They may have left fingerprints here from a purely innocent tea, for example.” Charlie pointed at the cup on the table in front of Vivian.

Vivian grasped the handle of the teacup with the tips of her thumb and index finger. She brought the cup to her nose and sniffed it. “Innocent tea,” she repeated as the faint odor of alcohol reached her nostrils. “Right. Did the police dust the murder weapon—the whiskey bottle?” she asked, setting the teacup down again.

“Yes, and most of the discernible prints belonged to Marjorie.”

“Most of them?” Vivian asked, looking back over her shoulder at Charlie. “So there were others?”

“Partials, yes.” Charlie shook his head. “But those could belong to anyone, especially if Marjorie shared her drinks.”

“Oh, Marjorie never shared,” Vivian answered with certainty. She paused for a second, then primly added, “Or so I've heard.”

The apartment was cramped and the furnishings fussy, full of doilies and antimacassars. Vivian wondered what Marjorie had been like outside work. No one at the station seemed to know a thing about Marjorie, the real Marjorie. And that suddenly struck Vivian as incredibly sad.

She wandered over to the far side of the room and brushed one of the heavy curtains aside. The view was completely obscured by the hulking brick building next door, the only place to look over the dim alley below. As Vivian watched, a cat jumped from a garbage bin and scurried down the street, hot on the heels of something small and quick. Vivian wished she could open the window and get a bit of fresh air. It was stuffy in the apartment, the air cloying and dusty. Her stomach was starting to turn at the task of rifling through a dead woman's things—especially since it felt like the woman had only stepped out briefly and was going to burst through the front door at any moment and catch them.

A loud clang rang out behind her, and Vivian jumped. She turned to see Charlie bending to retrieve something from the floor in the kitchen. He stood upright again, the handle of a saucepan clutched tightly in one hand.

“Sorry,” he said with a shrug. “I opened the cupboard door, and it just slid out.”

“Be quiet,” Vivian admonished, finger to her lips. “We're going to get caught.”

He nodded and worked the pan back into the cupboard in perfect silence. The ticking of the hall clock was almost deafening to Vivian's ears. She made her way to the magazine rack on the other side of the chair, brushing the intricately crocheted antimacassar on the arm with her fingertips as she bent down to retrieve a handful of magazines. Had Marjorie crocheted this herself? Vivian shook her head. That seemed highly unlikely.

Charlie disappeared down the short hallway, and now his hushed voice carried back to her.

“I don't see any signs of a family,” he said. “No photos.”

“No,” Vivian agreed. “Nothing.” There were no photos or identifying personal possessions in plain sight at all. It was odd but not unheard of. A lot of people in the city had distanced themselves from their families for one reason or another, and it was especially true among those in show business.

“Wait,” Charlie called from the hall. “I may have something here.” His voice was calm but insistent, and Vivian rushed to the hall, the magazines still clutched in her hands.

He was holding up a small notepad.

“It's blank,” Vivian said, staring at the clean, white sheet of paper.

Charlie smiled. “Yes, but there are still the indentations of the pencil on the pad underneath. If I rub the pencil across the paper like this…” He set the pad on the surface of the telephone nook and hunched over it, lightly brushing the side of the graphite tip against the paper. Vivian began to see white marks pop against the swath of gray. “We may be able to see what the last note she made said.”

“What is it?” she asked, excitement welling inside her. “What does it say?”

The excitement on Charlie's face peaked and then dimmed, the corners of his mouth drawing down after only a few strokes of the pencil. His brow furrowed, and he held the notepad up so that Vivian could see it.

“What's that?” she asked, considering the muddle of swirls and angles on the paper's surface.

“It's a doodle,” Charlie answered, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice. “Look's to be a shark,” he said, squinting at the drawing. “Or one of those fish with teeth. What do you call them?”

“A piranha,” Vivian said. “Couldn't that mean something? A nickname or something?” Vivian imagined a swarthy character named the Piranha sending Marjorie threatening letters.

“I doubt it,” Charlie said. “I've never heard of anyone like that, but make a note of it.”

Vivian nodded thoughtfully. Charlie wandered off down the hall, poking his head into Marjorie's bedroom. Vivian looked down at the magazines still clutched tightly in her hands, relaxing her grip and glancing at the titles.
Ladies' Home Journal
,
Pictorial
Weekly
,
Popular Mechanics
,
Ladies' Home Journal
again… Vivian blinked.
Popular Mechanics
? She walked back into the sitting room and dropped the rest of the magazines into the magazine rack. One missed and fell to the floor, but she didn't bother to pick it up.

Vivian scanned the pages of the incongruous periodical as each flicked past her thumb, looking for any type of clue.
Popular Mechanics
was undoubtedly a strange magazine for Marjorie to have, but Vivian noticed nothing out of the ordinary—until something caught her eye on the bottom of page 93. More precisely, it was the lack of something that caught her attention. Three neat squares had been cut out of an ad for radial tires—three squares that directly corresponded to what should have been an
S
, a
G
, and a
T
in the ad's copy. Vivian's stomach fluttered. This was the “something” she would know when she saw it. Quickly, she flipped through the rest of the magazine and found two more pages that looked as though they'd been chewed on by very precise, literate moths.

Charlie didn't look up as Vivian entered the bedroom. His head was bent over a little black leather-bound book, his brow furrowed in concentration.

“Did you find something?” she asked.

Charlie didn't answer.

“What's that?” Vivian nudged his elbow.

Charlie looked up, slowly focused his eyes on her, and said, “No, it's nothing.” Then he shut the book and shoved it unceremoniously back into the nightstand drawer, shutting it with a thump and turning back to her.

“Well, I did,” Vivian said, giddy with excitement. “At least, I think I did.” She held up the magazine, open to page 93, and peered at him through one of holes. “I would never have guessed that Marjorie was the
Popular Mechanics
type.”

Charlie snatched the magazine from her hands and flipped through it. “Did you find any other magazines like this? With letters cut out?”

Vivian shook her head. “This one was wedged between two
Ladies' Home Journals
,” she said. “Why would she cut the letters out like that? I mean, I've seen in the movies that people do that for ransom notes or…” Vivian gasped. “Do you think Marjorie was blackmailing someone?”