An Eye for Murder (15 page)

“Yes.”

“It’s an unusual story.” Silence.

I swung out of bed and took the phone into my office.

The locust tree, bathed in weak moonlight, threw spidery shadows through the window. “It started about a month ago.” I took him through the letter from Ruth. How it turned out my father knew BenS. The scrap of paper from the library books. How I’d found the post about Lisle. I left out the part about the break-in. When I finished, there was more silence.

Then, “You keep calling him BenS. I understand that was his E-mail moniker, but what was his real name?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Ms. Foreman, I can’t start to make any sense of this if I don’t know his name.”

A cloud moved across the moon, dimming the outline of the tree. I cradled the phone between my neck and shoulder. Why was I protecting Skull? He was dead. “His name was Skulnick. Ben Skulnick. But he called himself Ben Sinclair, at least for the last few years.”

“Skulnick? That doesn’t sound familiar. I don’t think I have any relatives by that name.”

“What about Sinclair?”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could help you.” He sounded as if he was winding down, preparing to hang up.

“You can.” I swiveled the chair so I faced the window. “Ben Skulnick was trying to locate Lisle Gottlieb. You know who she is, don’t you?”

“But I don’t know you, Ms. Foreman. And I’m not in the habit of releasing information to strangers. Especially ones who track me down by hacking into other people’s E-mail.” I winced, thinking about Boo Boo. “Mr. Linden, I didn’t hack into Ben’s E-mail. It’s true we don’t know each other, and maybe I was wrong to contact you the way that I did. But I wasn’t motivated by any desire to pry. I’m trying to find a connection between this man and Lisle Gottlieb.” Again I skipped over the break-in. “I was also thinking about my father,” I added.

“Your father?”

“Yes.”

“Why? What does your father have to do with this?”

“He knew Lisle Gottlieb.”

“Your father knew her?”

“Yes. I said that in my E-mail, didn’t I?”

“Who is your father?”

“Jake. Jake Foreman.”

“Your father is Jake Foreman?”

“Do you…have you heard that name before?”

The cloud moved away from the moon. The bark of the locust shimmered like a white birch.

“My mother said…she said he was her only friend in

Chicago.”

“Your mother was Lisle Gottlieb.”

“Yes.” For a heart-stopping moment, everything was still. “And she mentioned my father to you.”

“Yes.”

I swiveled in the chair. “So you know they were…I mean…you know she lived in a boardinghouse for a time.”

“In Lawndale.”

“The Teitelmans’ place.”

“Right.”

But this man’s name was David Linden. Not Weiss. “Your father… he wasn’t—”

“My stepfather, Joseph Linden, adopted me. My father died before I was born.”

“Your father was Kurt Weiss.”

His voice registered surprise. “How did you know?”

“My father told me. But he lost touch with your mother after she…left Chicago. Where did she go?”

“She moved to Philadelphia.”

Philadelphia. All I knew about the place was hoagies, cheese-steaks, and soft pretzels. And that W. C. Fields considered it marginally preferable to death.

A sound issued from the other end. It could have been a chuckle. “I take it you’re not impressed.”

“I’ve never been there. Do you live there now?”

A new silence pressed down on my skin. Had I overstepped some tacit boundary, asked one too many questions? I blew out my breath, fanning the hair on my forehead.

“Mr. Linden, I’m not sure why Skull was–”

“Skull?”

“I’m sorry. Mr. Skulnick was sometimes called Skull by his friends.”

“I see.”

I probably had about five seconds until he hung up. “Mr. Linden, Ben wanted to reach your mother. Do you have any idea why?”

“No. It’s moot anyway. She died a long time ago.”

“I’m sorry.” Shit. Now he would hang up. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

Another pause. Then, “Ms. Foreman, I have no idea how you think I can help you.” Here it comes. “But you may be able to help me.”

I realized my mouth was open. I closed it. “Me? Help you?”

He cleared his throat. “You’ve realized, no doubt, that I am interested in tracing my family roots.”

“Yes.”

“As it happens, I’ll be in Chicago next week on business. If your father really is the same Jake Foreman who knew my mother, I’d like to meet him.”

“You want to talk to my father?”

“Very much.” For the first time during the call, his voice seemed vulnerable, stripped of all artifice.

Butterflies dive-bombed my stomach. “I’ll ask him, but I don’t think he’d mind.”

“Good. I’ll call you back in a day or two.”

“I could E-mail you.”

“I’ll call,” he said firmly.

Disconnecting, I almost skipped back to the bedroom. My efforts had paid off. Of course, there was the small problem that David Linden didn’t recognize Skull’s name. But there had to be a connection between his mother and Ben Skulnick. I was confident I’d find it.

As I undressed, it occurred to me that David Linden didn’t know the exact nature of his mother’s relationship with my father. Lisle considered Dad a friend, he’d said. I recalled Dad telling me how Lisle, pregnant and alone, came to see him after Kurt died. How she begged my father to take care of her. David Linden should only know how close he came to having Jake Foreman as his stepfather. Some friend.

I was nearly asleep when the drum of rain against the window roused me. I got up and turned on the light. Rivulets of water dribbled down the glass and pooled on the sill. I closed the window, glancing out as I did. A car was inching down the street. I couldn’t make out the model or color, but I thought I saw two people in the front.

When it slowed in front of my house, I lunged for the phone and tore it off the base. As I started to punch in nine and then one, I heard a car door close, its slam muffled by the rain. I dropped the phone and raised the shade high, flooding part of the lawn with light. The car pulled away, leaving a silvery spray of rain in its wake. My neighbors’ spotlights threw a wash of light over the car as it passed; it was a tan, four-door sedan.

I forced myself to take deep breaths until the swishing sound of tires on wet pavement faded. I put the phone back on the base, instinctively knowing the police couldn’t help me. Whoever was out there would make sure of it.

I crept downstairs, blood pulsing in my ears, and made sure the doors were locked. I went into the kitchen and grabbed the biggest knife I could find. When I got back upstairs, I stowed the knife under my bed and checked on Rachel. She was sleeping peacefully. Someone should.

Chapter Twenty-two

Mac picked me up on Friday in the darkest, stillest part of the night, when the hum of the insects had stopped but the twitter of birds hadn’t begun. We were heading out to shoot some B-roll before meeting Marian Iverson a few hours later. Mac had a friend with thirty acres of farmland near Harvard, Illinois, and we wanted to get a beauty shot of dawn breaking over the prairie.

Mac had dispensed with seats, stereo speakers, and cup holders in his oversized Ford Expedition. Filled with large metallic cases and not much else, the van reminded me of a stripped-down transport plane. I squeezed in beside camera cases and the sound man. Mac’s cameraman handed me a cup of coffee.

“Bless you my child.” I took the paper cup from him. He crossed himself and folded his hands.

Once off the highway, we cruised down a rural road. The van’s headlights swept across an occasional farm, barn, and roadside store, but the landscape was mostly fields of young corn and soybeans, which, in the darkness, seemed to extend forever, a series of expanding universes with infinite horizons. I kept turning around, half expecting to see a tan car behind us, but there was nothing but empty road. As we turned off at a dirt road bisecting a cornfield, the sky lightened from black to charcoal. A bird began a feeble chirp.

Mac and his crew unloaded the cases from the van. I gathered up empty coffee cups and stowed them in a plastic bag.

“I hate to admit this.” I wiped my hands on my pants. “But I’m not sure which way is east.”

Mac didn’t answer me. “Mac?”

He finished bolting the camera to the tripod, then turned around in a wide circle. He faced me and flipped up his palms. “You’re kidding.” I’d thought about bringing a compass but decided that would be too heavy-handed. A producer has to trust her crew. Damn. I should have listened to my gut. I started walking toward the van. “Gotcha.” Mac chortled.

I spun around. He dug out a compass from his jeans pocket.

“Don’t do that again.” I sagged against a fencepost.

“Oh ye of little faith.” He handed me the compass. “Here. You’re in charge of the sun. Make sure it comes up right”— he pointed across the cornfield—“over there.”

I looked. Two trees of different heights framed an open space in the distance, their ebony branches etched against the horizon. There was an exotic, almost African feel to the shot. Ankle-high stalks of corn ran diagonally across the foreground. The symmetry in the shot was conscious but not extreme. “You scouted this ahead of time, didn’t you?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged.

He must have made a special trip just to find the right shot. “It’s perfect.”

He smiled. “And, before you ask, I
am
using a neutral density filter. Either a six or a nine.”

The sound man told us to be quiet and began recording the birds and the stirrings of little creatures. A gentle breeze pushed through the grass. The sky brightened, and fingers of purple clouds above the trees became tinged with crimson. The chill in the air melted away, leaving wisps of mist that clung to the cornstalks. We camped on the dirt road and waited.

A few minutes later, a smudge of red broke through the horizon. Mac turned on the camera. Gold replaced the crimson-edged clouds, and the trees changed from pen-andink sketches to color. The sun crested the trees. We applauded.

An hour later, fortified with more coffee and doughnuts, we drove into town. A town of about six thousand, Harvard was a center for dairy farming in years past, especially during World War Two. Though the farming population dwindled after the war, a Motorola plant helped stem the community’s decline, and every June Harvard commemorates its past in a four-day festival called “Milk Days.”

We set up in the center of town, where instead of some obscure military figure, a statue of a Holstein named Harmilda graces a plaza. A small crowd had gathered, and Marian, impeccable in a navy and white St. John dress, cut a long white ribbon with a pair of giant shears. The crowd cheered, and a sea of balloons floated skyward. I tapped Mac on the shoulder. He panned up for a shot.

After the ceremony, during which Marian delivered the requisite platitudes in precise eight-second sound bites, she started working the crowd. We followed with the camera. At one point, she bent down to a little girl in shorts and a cropped shirt and clasped both of her hands around the little girl’s. The girl smiled up adoringly. I turned around to Mac. He gave me a thumbs-up.

People were in high spirits: For farmers, it was the launch of a new season; for factory workers, a day off. Kids, happy to be out of school, jostled each other exuberantly. Marian was in her element, too, seeming to fuel herself with the energy of the crowd. Success must be rejuvenating.

We took a lunch break at the local McDonald’s. The contrived cheerfulness of the place, with its splashes of yellow, red, and brown plastic, was a welcome break from the wholesomeness of Milk Days. Grabbing a booth, I massaged my jaw, sore from too many smiles, and unwrapped my Big Mac. Mac sat down with a salad and diet Coke.

I eyeballed his tray. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

“I have to keep my girlish figure.”

I stuffed fries into my mouth. “How much have we shot?”

“Including the beauty shot, five cassettes.” At thirty minutes per cassette, that was over two hours of raw footage. “I know tomorrow’s Saturday, but do you think I can get window dubs?”

He dipped his hand into my fries. “You’ll pay for it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Buy me a shake. In honor of Milk Days.”

I went up to the counter and ordered a chocolate shake, although it was doubtful anything in the chemical soup they gave me was real milk. Then I called to check on Rachel. School had ended two days ago, and she’d spent the night over at Genna’s. She and Katie were now at the pool. When I got back to the table, the milkshake container was empty. So was my bag of fries, and Mac was nodding at a bearded guy in a safari shirt with a camera slung over his shoulder.

“So Customs stops the car and opens it up. Man, there had to be over thirty of ’em packed into this Ford Expedition. A new one, too. Just like yours. Uncles, aunts, cousins, kids, all of them desperate to get across the border.”

“What happened?” Mac asked.

“They sent ’em all back to Mexico. I mean, that’s what they were supposed to do, right? Can’t contaminate our soil with illegals. Gave ’em a couple of bucks and put ’em back on the bus to Cartegena,” he said.

But that’s in Colombia, I thought. “What about the van?” Mac asked.

“Bingo.” The man pointed his index finger at Mac. “That’s the real story, my friend. Customs kept it. Just appropriated it, said it belonged to the government of the United States. The Mexicans couldn’t do a damn thing about it.”

“No shit,” Mac said.

“For all I know, it was ours to begin with. The wetbacks coulda ripped it off themselves.” He shook his head. “Someone’s probably running dope into Texas with it right now.”

“I don’t believe it,” Mac said.

The man opened his palm. “Man. I swear to you. I saw it with my own eyes. Got the pictures to prove it.” He tapped his camera.

Mac turned, saw me coming, and yanked his thumb in my direction. “Here she is. Talk to her.”