The Girl Is Trouble (19 page)

“That’s a great idea.” Pearl tossed a pointed look my way. “I’d hate to come down with something.”

Miriam made note of the liverwurst sandwich with a wrinkle of her nose. “Are you hungry, dear?”

Pearl nodded while trying to return the sandwich to her bag.

“Lydia—please see to it that Miss Levine gets a snack. I believe there are cookies in the kitchen. Those should tide her over until the party.”

“Have you decided to go to the Pollocks’, then?” I asked.

“Adam wants to go. He said it would be rude to decline at this point. Frankly, I think it would be odd for him to go alone, don’t you?” Aunt Miriam didn’t look happy about that, but she was hardly the kind of spouse to tell her husband no when he’d made a decision. “But don’t worry—Lydia will be here if you need anything, Iris. And I’m sure we won’t be late.”

On cue, Uncle Adam appeared. He looked so different from the last time I’d seen him. While Pop was the younger of the two of them and, arguably, the more handsome of the brothers, Uncle Adam had also been an attractive man. Now his face was crisscrossed with lines I’d never seen before, a kind of road map of grief that made it hard to look directly at him.

Had guilt done this?

“You must be Pearl,” he said while extending his hand. Pearl took it reluctantly, like she half expected to find it rigged with a buzzer.

“I was just moving Pearl to another room,” said Miriam. “I don’t think it’s wise for the girls to be in such close quarters with Iris sick.”

“No, that doesn’t seem very smart,” said Uncle Adam. Miriam hustled Pearl from the room and exited behind her. I was hoping Uncle Adam would leave, too, but he seemed to have other plans. He closed the door and looked my way. For a moment the veneer of weakness I thought I’d seen in him lifted. I got the impression that just as I was seeing through him, he was seeing through me. “What’s bothering you, Iris?”

That my mother was murdered and you may have been involved in it
.
Oh, and that affair you two were having. That’s got me a little rattled, too.
“Pearl and I had a fight,” I said.

“That’s no way to start the weekend.” He sat on the bed beside me. The springs groaned beneath his weight. “What are you two quarreling about?”

“I didn’t stick up for her when someone accused her of something terrible.” I gave him the same pointed look Pearl had given me, though it seemed to go right over his head. “I know it was the wrong thing to do. Pearl couldn’t have done something like that.”

“I’m sure she’ll forgive you. I understand you’re not feeling well?”

“Just a little warm and woozy.”

He put a clammy hand to my forehead. I recoiled at his touch as though it were dead flesh he was touching me with, not the arm of a living, breathing man. “You don’t feel warm to me.”

“Your hands are pretty cold.”

He rubbed them together as though that would somehow ease my discomfort with him. “I must say I’m disappointed you won’t be joining us tonight. The Pollocks were very excited when I told them you were visiting.”

“I hope it’s not an inconvenience,” I said.

“Illness is always an inconvenience, but only to the person suffering it. Are you sure you can’t rally and go with us?”

I receded further into the bed. “I wish I could. I really do, but I just feel too awful to go anywhere.” I didn’t dare fake a cough in front of Adam. He would’ve seen through it faster than a sheer skirt on a sunny day.

He put his hand on my blanket-covered feet. “I was very surprised when Miriam told me you were coming this weekend. Even more so that Art thought it was a good idea.”

I curled up my legs to increase the distance between us. “I think Pop wanted me out of the house for a while.”

“Why is that?”

I thought of Pop crying over the photos of Mama, then forced the image out of my head. “He’s seeing someone. I think he wanted some time alone with her.”

An eyebrow went up. “Really? I had no idea.”

“It’s kind of hush-hush,” I said. “In fact, I don’t think he knows that I know, but I’m pretty sure that’s why he was so nice about my coming here.”

He frowned. “It hasn’t even been a year yet.”

Was it grief that brought Pop to look at Mama’s pictures the night before, or guilt? It seemed incredibly disrespectful for Pop to dive into a new relationship so soon, but weren’t the circumstances a little unusual? She’d been cheating on him, after all. With his own brother.

“She’s very nice,” I said. “She’s our landlady’s daughter.”

He paused a moment too long, drinking me in with eyes that I’d never remembered seeming so cold. “And you feel safe there, Iris? On the Lower East Side?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“I just wanted to make sure. We worry about you, you know.” He patted my legs through the coverlet. “Get some rest.”

“I will. Thanks.”

He stood up and started to leave. Right before he reached the door, he paused. “Your mother’s death must be weighing heavily on your mind.”

I swallowed hard. “Maybe.”

“It must be very hard to be here so close to the first anniversary of when all that happened. After all, this is where you heard the awful news.”

“It’s a little hard.” What was he getting at?

“Maybe you even feel guilty being away from your father during this time. Worried that if you have fun without him you’re betraying him in some way.”

If he thought this weekend was fun for me, he sure didn’t know me very well. “I don’t think that,” I said.

“Okay. But if you did, it would be okay. Being here, away from him, you’re not hurting him. If he can move on with this landlady’s daughter, you can, too.”

“All right.” Another awkward pause as he waited for me to say … what exactly? “I think I’d like to take a nap,” I said.

He nodded as though to say that while the subject was closed for the moment, he expected to bring it up again. “Sleep well, Iris,” he told me, before leaving me alone.

Right then I had the strongest urge to call Pop. I needed to hear his voice and to know that he was all right, that he wasn’t in fact spending the whole weekend prostrate before Mama’s photos. I left my room and crept into the hallway. I could hear Miriam and Pearl talking in the room beside mine. I tiptoed past them and went into the kitchen, where Lydia was arranging cookies on a platter.

Boy, howdy—Pearl was going to shake when she saw that display of sugar.

“Aunt Miriam said I could use the phone,” I told Lydia. Recognizing my need for privacy, she took the platter and left the room. I found a few stray cookies that hadn’t made their way onto the tray and pocketed them for later. Then I lifted the receiver and asked the operator to connect me to Pop’s office exchange.

“AA Investigations,” he said.

I was so relieved to get him that I almost couldn’t speak. “It’s Iris, Pop.”

“Iris! Is everything okay?”

I felt silly all of a sudden. Why was I calling? “Yeah. I just wanted to let you know that we made it to Adam and Miriam’s.”

“Good, good.” He sounded distracted. Was there someone there with him? Betty, maybe? “Are you having fun?”

I wrapped the phone’s pigtail cord around my hand. “I guess.”

“I want you to enjoy yourself this weekend. Okay? No feeling guilty for being there and having a good time.” Why were both Adam and he talking about guilt? What did I have to feel guilty about? “I have to go.” And then he said something he’d never said to me before. “I love you, Iris.”

He hung up before I could say the same to him.

The call did nothing to ease my nerves. By the time Miriam came to check on me, I was nauseated for real.

“What can I get for you before we go?” she asked me.

“Nothing, thanks. I just want to sleep.”

She turned off the lamp and started to leave.

“Aunt Miriam?”

“Yes, dear?”

I had a hunch about the weekend that I had to follow. “Why did you decide to invite me here?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

I rolled onto my side. “This is the first time you’ve invited me since we moved to the Lower East Side.”

Her hand found the string of pearls around her neck and gently tugged on it. “You know that’s not true. I’ve always told you our door was open.”

“I know that, but it’s the first time you’ve invited me for a specific date. Why now?”

She tucked a loose hair behind her ear. “Hanukah, of course.”

“But Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah are much bigger holidays.”

I could see a flicker in her eyes that meant I was onto something.

“Did Pop ask you to invite me?” I asked.

Her eyebrow rose almost imperceptibly. “He and I may have spoken about it.”

Her visit to our house that night had been planned? “Why the ruse?”

“I … I don’t think I know the answer to that, Iris.”

“What did he tell you when he asked you to invite me for the weekend?”

“Just that he had some things to deal with this weekend and thought it would be better if you weren’t around while he did so. I think he’s worried about how the anniversaries are going to affect you. He thought we might be a good distraction. And frankly, I was thrilled when he suggested it. I’m hoping this means that after all that’s happened we might be able to be a family again.”

She had to have been shocked when Pop called her. And why her, after all? Why not ask Pearl’s parents to take me for the weekend? Did he want me out of the Lower East Side so I didn’t accidentally run into Betty and him walking arm in arm? Or was there some other reason he didn’t want me around?

The tension left her face and she smiled at me. “Get some rest, Iris. We’ll be back in a few hours.”

I told her I would, though rest was the farthest thing from my mind.

CHAPTER

17

THEY WERE OUT THE DOOR
at 7:00. At 7:15 Lydia came to check on me. I assured her I was fine and was planning on spending the evening sleeping. She showed me how to use the call buzzer to summon her if I needed anything, then left me alone.

I ate the cookies I’d stolen and let five minutes pass before leaving the room. I could hear Lydia in the kitchen, fixing herself a snack to accompany her as she listened to
Amos ’n’ Andy
. I tiptoed in sock-clad feet across the parlor to the room my uncle used as his office, with my camera and picklocks in hand. The door was shut and locked. Apparently, Uncle Adam made a habit of not trusting anyone, including his wife.

I took a deep breath and went to work inserting my picklocks into the keyhole. I tried to pretend it was one of Pop’s practice locks and set about the delicate task of turning the picks this way and that before they came into contact with the vital part of the mechanism. With just a few adjustments, the lock sprang open and I found myself facing a dark room.

I barricaded myself behind the door, and stumbled blindly until I located a lamp I’d spied when I first entered. Adam’s office seemed like the big brother to Pop’s modest space. Instead of a secondhand desk and chair, Uncle Adam had a custom-made piece covered in a leather blotter, and a padded leather throne upholstered in the same deep red. It was hard to believe he ever conducted business in such a pristine room, but then I guess that was kind of the point. This wasn’t Adam’s only office. He had a storefront space where he met clients. This office was for the more important people, the ones paying a premium for discretion, who couldn’t risk being seen going into and coming out of a detective’s office. And it was also the place he stored his case files, to ensure they were secure under lock and key. During those few months when I’d stayed with them after Mama died and while Pop was recovering, he’d told me all about it, how there was a certain class of people who’d take you seriously only if you had a business address and another class that wouldn’t dare meet you somewhere that advertised what they were up to. So he catered to both to maximize his profits.

Unlike Pop, he wasn’t militant in his neatness. There were stacks of papers to be filed, notes he’d scrawled on the backs of envelopes or bills or a menu for a restaurant that delivered its food right to your door. There was clearly a method to his madness, though. You didn’t reach Uncle Adam’s level of success if you couldn’t find what you needed to find. And while he might have lacked the basic skills necessary to create order, he wasn’t above hiring someone to create it for him. That task fell to a file clerk who came to the house once a week to make sure notes and other materials made it into the proper folders in his cabinets.

Aunt Miriam used to do the job for him, but at some point he’d decided it was unsavory to have his wife working for him. Or maybe he just no longer wanted her to have the ability to pry into his business.

I started by looking through his desk. This seemed the most likely place for him to store some personal memento of an affair. The drawers were locked, but they took only a skeleton key that the picklocks could mimic with little effort. When the first drawer was opened, I quickly scanned its contents, only to find a collection of office supplies—pencils, pens, and paper clips—that hardly seemed to warrant locking it. The second drawer held stationery, a receipt pad, envelopes, and postage—again, hardly the kinds of things worth the effort of turning a key. The last drawer had a bottle of whiskey, two crystal tumblers, and a gun. There was a box of bullets, too, so light when I picked it up that I had to open it to confirm that there was anything in it.

What kind of gun had been used on Mama?

I took a photo of it just in case.

“Mr. Ackerman?” Lydia’s voice tore through the room, interrupting my work. She knocked on the door. “Sir? Are you in there?” Nuts. I hadn’t locked the door behind me. She must’ve seen the light under the door and assumed Uncle Adam had stayed behind. I looked for a hiding place, but there weren’t any available, save the space beneath the desk. Moving as quietly as possible, I crouched in the cavern intended for Uncle Adam’s legs, and pulled my own stems into my chest. Just as I got into position the door creaked open. “Sir?” She was silent as the empty space greeted her. I held my breath. Could she hear my heartbeat? Feel my pulse as the blood rushed through my veins?