An Eye for Murder (8 page)

As I pulled into the garage, I got the shakes. I thought about the bottle of bourbon above the refrigerator. That wasn’t a solution. Neither was weed. Or cigarettes. Or any of the other substances I abuse from time to time. I sat in the car until the trembling stopped, wondering if that was going to happen whenever I came home from now on.

Barry dropped Rachel off at the end of the driveway around four but sped away before I could talk to him. After she unpacked, I poured two glasses of fresh lemonade and opened a box of cookies. She eyed me suspiciously. “What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

“You never make lemonade and cookies. Something’s wrong.”

“Okay.” I leaned across the table. “Here it is. Someone broke into the house last night.” When I finished explaining, she jumped up and threw her arms around me. “Oh, Mom, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, honey.” I buried my face in her neck. Her skin was smooth and warm. Still little girl’s skin.

“Were you scared?”

“I wasn’t here when they broke in. But yes, I was scared.” She released her grip and helped herself to another cookie.

“What did they get?”

“That’s just it,” I said. “Not much. A few pieces of silver, some jewelry. Nothing of yours.” I took a sip of lemonade. I didn’t mention Skull’s cartons.

She stroked her jaw with her fingers, just like Dad. “Probably someone on drugs.”

I nearly choked on my lemonade. “How do you know that?”

“Everyone knows drug addicts steal to feed their habit.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mom, even Officer Friendly warns kids about stuff like that.”

Part of the Police Are Your Partners program, no doubt. “Well, the police agree with you. They’re doing what they can, but there is a chance they’ll never catch the people who did it.”

She grabbed the last cookie off the plate and crammed half of it in her mouth. “That’s okay.” She chewed thoughtfully. “I’ve got you to protect me.”

From her mouth to God’s ears. I bit into the other half of the cookie.

That night I pulled out the vacuum cleaner and tried to restore order to my office and my life. We live on a cul de sac, and I’d always thought ours was the safest house on the block. After all, what burglar in their right mind would risk driving past seventeen houses, twice, just to rob mine? If they had been on foot, they might have cut across a few backyards, but, given that they made off with heavy cartons, that seemed unlikely.

Which meant that whoever broke in was pretty hard up or strung out. But then, why leave the cash and the jewelry? Wasn’t that exactly what junkies wanted? I finished vacuuming and bent over to unplug the cord. As I did, I came across Skull’s Zippo underneath the desk, wedged between the hard drive and the wall. It must have fallen out of my bag when Fletcher was here. I picked it up, its silver casing glinting in the light. As I straightened up, the image of two men watching me lug Skull’s cartons out to the car outside Ruth Fleishman’s sprang into my mind. Were they the addicts who broke into my house? Did they follow me home, thinking those cartons somehow contained the mother lode?

I palmed the lighter. Maybe I should call O’Malley. No. That was stupid. Drug addicts don’t lurk in front of old ladies’ homes on the off chance that someone might emerge with cartons. Susan was right. I was getting obsessive.

I took the Zippo down to the kitchen. The lighter fluid was sitting on the counter. I unscrewed the small bolt on the bottom, filled the cottony cavity with fluid, and reattached the screw. I flipped open the cap and rolled the flint. A steady orange flame leapt up. Who was Ben Skulnick? And why did he have my name? I knew practically nothing about him except that he changed his name, spent time at the library, and knew my father sixty years ago.

Capping the flame, I ran my fingers over the bumpy engravings of the S, K, and L. This lighter could be the only tangible proof that the man ever existed. Ninety years of life reduced to a Zippo. For some reason, Dorothea Lange’s series of poor migrant workers drifted into my mind; stoic faces staring into a desolate future.

No. My hand closed around the lighter. There was something else. The scrap of paper that fell out of his library book. With a web site scrawled in pencil. The web site had meant something to Skull—enough to write it down. I searched my memory, willing the URL to come into my mind: www.familyroots.com.

I went back upstairs and logged on, waiting impatiently while the computer downloaded information that, like a mosaic, gradually merged into a series of images. At the top of the page was a sepia-toned photo of a woman with a baby in her arms. The baby was in an old-fashioned sailor suit, and the woman’s hair was coiled in braids around her head. Below that were more images: a Davy Crockett lookalike in buckskins and coonskin hat; a line of immigrants at Ellis Island; a little boy in knickers rolling a hoop. A paragraph of text in the center described the web site as a free exchange of genealogical information with over fifty thousand topics in its database.

I hit an icon and a page of topics materialized: everything from Icelanders in the Dakotas to descendants of the Mexican revolution. A flashing cursor urged me to type in the topic or surname I wanted to search. I typed in Foreman and was promptly informed that there was a family tree for the name Foreman. Did I want to search through all the posts for that name?

I clicked, and twenty messages popped up on the screen, each requesting information about a specific Foreman. Dad was an only child, but Roses, Simons and Leopolds ran through his family tree. I scrolled through the messages looking for those names. I didn’t find anything.

Hitting the link to a new page, I was invited to upload my branch of the family tree to the Internet. I declined and clicked onto a site that claimed it could search through four hundred million names for relatives. Half a billion names. Why would anyone spend that much time chasing down a few of them? Were people that isolated? Maybe finding a distant cousin or great-uncle somehow elevated your family’s status. We’ll call your folk hero and raise you an eccentric or two.

I typed in the name “Skulnick,” imagining the computer culling through four hundred million names. The results came back. No match. I tried again. Nothing. There was no family tree for the Skulnicks.

No clothes, no boxes, no web site. I had struck out. I shut down the computer and changed into my bathrobe. I should have tried harder to open the box at Mrs. Fleishman’s. Now it was too late.

I turned off the light and pulled the covers under my chin, thinking how ironic, even sad, it was that Skull and Ruth died so close together. Maybe Officer Powers was right. Maybe they had been more than just landlord and boarder. I curled on my side. At least they had each other.

Some pair. I smiled, recalling how hard Ruth tried to open Skull’s metal box. How frustrated she was when she couldn’t. How she threw it back in the carton with an exasperated sigh.

I stopped smiling. Something about that nagged at me. Something about the box. I mentally replayed the scene. Ruth put the metal box back in the carton. I found the lighter. Then she asked me to take Skull’s clothes to
Or Hadash
, and I carried two of the cartons down to my car. No, it wasn’t the box itself. It was the carton the metal box had been in. The third carton. I had taken two cartons downstairs. But there was a third. And now that I was thinking about it, I didn’t recall seeing the third carton when I got back to Mrs. Fleishman’s.

I propped myself up on my elbow and turned on the light. Ruth had been sprawled on her side in the middle of the floor. One arm was extended as if she was raising her hand. Her other arm was bent across her middle. The bed was against the wall, the desk under the window. The closet door was open. But there was no carton in the room. I was sure. Mrs. Fleishman was lying on the spot where it had been.

I got up and shuffled into the bathroom. Ruth had probably moved it herself. She said she wanted to get rid of it. Except that she’d watched me lug the other cartons downstairs without lifting a finger to help. Why would she suddenly decide to move the third one by herself? Moreover, given her age and condition, how could she? Maybe the strain was what triggered her heart attack. But then, where was the carton?

I picked up my hairbrush. Maybe someone else moved it for her. I ran the brush through my hair. That was it. Her neighbor, Shirley Altshuler, had come over for coffee after I left. She and Ruth probably shoved it across the hall into another room. Possibly even downstairs. I got back in bed and slipped a pillow over my head. Problem solved.

Seconds later, I lifted the pillow off. Why hadn’t Ruth asked me to move the carton along with the others? She wasn’t shy about asking for favors, and she’d watched me carry the other two downstairs. It was odd that she felt compelled to move the third carton after I left. Unless she was planning to have another go at the metal box.

I kicked out my legs, tangled in the sheets, and felt cool air on my feet. What if she and Shirley had managed to open the box while I was driving around Rogers Park? Maybe they had discovered something important about Skull, something that made Ruth go back up to his room after Shirley went home. That would explain why Ruth had collapsed in Skull’s room. Maybe I should call Shirley in the morning. She’d given me her number. I curled up on my side. Good idea.

No it wasn’t.

Shirley was a lovely person, but she’d probably think it odd if I asked whether she’d moved her neighbor’s boarder’s possessions. I would. And what would I say when she asked why I wanted to know? I wasn’t sure myself. And what if it turned out she and Ruth hadn’t moved the carton? Or opened the box? Where was that third carton?

I thought about the cartons that were stolen from my house. I thought about the carton that was supposed to be at Ruth Fleishman’s. I thought about the two men in the car, and the family roots web site, advising me there was no family tree for the Skulnicks. Something wasn’t right.

Chapter Twelve

Monday mornings are full of hope. I’ve got my own version of the nursery rhyme that tells you what to expect from life depending on the day you were born. Monday is my favorite. It’s a clean slate, a chance to begin again, avoid mistakes, start a diet.

The weather finally broke. As if to apologize for the past few weeks, balmy sunshine bathed everything with a warm glow, and all the little green things that poke their heads out of the ground seemed to sprout overnight. Even the ground smelled earthy and fresh. The lawn would need attention soon. Barry used to handle the yard, investing lots of time and money to make sure our lawn measured up to everyone else’s. I used to tease him about his “greenis” envy.

I showered and brought a glass of orange juice up to my office. The Midwest Mutual script was due today. An internal marketing video on how well the company handled catastrophes, or “cats,” it wouldn’t win an Oscar. Nonetheless, I felt obligated to find a creative approach, as much to keep my own interest up as to deliver a good product.

I haven’t always done corporate videos. I discovered Edward R. Murrow in college, and his work inspired me to study film. I, too, would produce hard-hitting documentaries that would change the world. Along the way, though, I was seduced by the challenge of telling a story through images, not words, and I started to flirt with feature films. Unfortunately, I was already seeing Barry and kept postponing a move to New York or L.A. To work in Chicago back then meant producing industrials or commercials, but I drew the line at commercials. Now, of course, I make twentyto thirtyminute commercials to pay the bills, but we call them corporate identity films.

I did land a job at Channel Eleven for a couple of years before Rachel was born, and I worked on a few documentaries that are still rolled out when they need to fill airtime. And one day in the future, when I’m financially stable—well— who knows?

Now, for some reason, a version of
The Tempest
kept sneaking into my mind. The shipwreck could be the cat, and Ariel the metaphor for the internal system that gears up at the first sign of trouble. But I wasn’t sure how to deal with Caliban or the love story between Miranda and Ferdinand. I took another sip of juice. Maybe it would come.The phone rang an hour later. I jumped at the sound.

“Ellie, it’s Mac. How’s it going?”

Reaching for my juice, I told him about the break-in. He was quiet. Then, “You’ve had one lousy week.”

“Tell me about it.”

“If there’s anything I can do—”

“There isn’t. The police think it was a random thing. Junkies.”

“What did they take?”

“Not much.” I filled him in. “They left the TV and VCR?”

“Yeah.”

“The dope must have fried their brain cells.”

“Thank God.”

“Yeah. Well, listen. I may have some good news for you. That Zippo you have? It could be worth a thousand bucks.”

“No way.”

“That’s what they’re quoting on eBay.”

I rolled my neck muscles, which have been stiff for the past several years. Poor ergonomic posture. “Lose some pearls, gain a lighter.”

“I guess you could—” The beep of my call-waiting interrupted him.

“Hold on, Mac.” I tapped the switchhook. “Ellie Foreman.”

“Ellie, my name is Roger Wolinsky. I’m campaign manager for Marian Iverson.” It was a cool, confident voice. All business.

“Hello. Hang on a second, will you?” I tapped back to Mac. “Call you back.” I put on my professional voice. “Sorry. What can I do for you, Mr. Wolinsky?”

He cleared his throat. “The candidate wanted me to call you.” The candidate? “We’re planning a campaign video, and we’d like to explore the possibility of having you produce it. You come highly recommended.”

Me? I felt my cheeks flush. “I’m flattered, but I have to tell you I don’t do political work.”

“Oh?” He sounded surprised. I picked up my orange juice, swirled it around, watched flecks of pulp coat the glass. “You did
Celebrate Chicago
.”

“That wasn’t political.”