Regarding Anna (15 page)

Flora assigned a junior clerk to pull the records for me, ten at a time. It was an arduous task for him but not for me. I was looking for a particular address, for the place of death, something I could determine in seconds.

Two hours into the project, I found it. Marcus O’Gowan had died at the boardinghouse address on June 6, 1943. Cause of death: heart attack. So Anna’s hunch had been right—he hadn’t given her his real name. But why?

It was disappointing that many of the fields on the death certificate that could have contained helpful information were left blank. What was even more disheartening was that it said he was born in Dublin, Ireland, and was not a U.S. citizen, which limited any other information I would be able to dig up on him. His middle initial was T; his birthday was July 20, 1909; and his cremated remains were buried in Cook County Cemetery. I had to accept the fact that was probably all I would ever know about him.

I drove by my old house on the way home and, being in a sentimental mood, parked a few houses down from it. It seemed so much longer than four and a half years since I’d lived here.

I stared at the front door, a door we had seldom used. A rolled-up newspaper lay on the walk leading to it. When I was young, that had been my job—bringing in the mail and newspapers.

Beyond that door was the living room. We’d seldom used that either. Thinking back, I realized the three of us had usually been in separate rooms, doing our own things.

I watched an approaching car slow down in front of the house. Elmer’s turquoise Buick was unmistakable. I wasn’t too surprised to see him since he had said he lived in the neighborhood. Not wanting to run into him, I quickly slumped down in my seat.

The next thing I knew, he was pulling into my old driveway!

FOURTEEN

The Ninety-Pound Wuss

I remained slouched down behind my steering wheel, peering over the dashboard, as Elmer’s car disappeared behind the row of thick evergreens that lined the side of the driveway.

I wracked my brain trying to remember that conversation in December when I told him about the neighbor boy who’d dropped by the office to see him. I was pretty sure he’d said he lived in the next block, but he’d acted real funny during that conversation, like he hadn’t wanted to talk about it. Why would he have lied about where he lived? That is, if he did live there.

A car door slammed. Elmer emerged from behind the evergreens, walked to the front of the house, picked up the newspaper, and returned to the back. I waited another minute, but nothing happened. Not wanting to risk him recognizing my car, I headed for home.

* * *

Well before work the next morning, I drove by my old house again. Elmer’s car was in the same spot in the driveway. Either he lived there, or he was close to someone who did.

Later, at the office, Naomi came over to tell me that the name Ignacio Ramirez was so common in Mexico, and Anna’s uncle’s involvement with Pemex had been so long ago, that she hadn’t been able to come up with anything. She appeared as though she was about to say something else but then stopped herself and walked out of the room. She’d been acting a little strange lately—fidgety or something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Fearful it might have something to do with the work I was giving to her, I made a mental note to talk to her about it after Elmer left for the day.

Disappointed with Naomi’s findings, I went to work on the Storage Room case. Finding birth parents was usually difficult. If an adoption went through an agency, the agency kept tight control of the records. Same thing if it went through an attorney. And if the adoption was illegal, it was even harder to unearth any information about it.

There was another case on my desk that I had recently acquired—I called it my Midnighter case. Flora Walsh from the County Clerk’s office had retained me, but a dozen or so of her neighbors were sharing in the cost. For the past three months, she and her neighbors had had a variety of things stolen in the middle of the night from their patios, garages, sheds, and yards. Nothing expensive. In fact, that was one of the puzzling aspects of the case—I was told the burglar had sometimes taken trivial things and ignored valuable items placed right next to them. Stolen items included clothing, food, small tools, toys, bedding, and books.

Flora explained that the police had little interest in these penny-ante thefts, so she and her neighbors had taken it upon themselves to catch the thief on their own. After each neighbor had taken a turn standing watch through the night to no avail, they’d hired me.

I had a little breathing room in the afternoon, and so I went into the back room and combed through all the Attic Finds evidence to see if any bells went off given the new information I had.

I couldn’t stop staring at the photo of Anna holding me in the rocking chair. She was looking down at me so lovingly. All you could see was her profile, but even so, you could tell she was smiling. I had never paid that much attention to the picture hanging on the wall behind us, and when I studied it more closely, it looked familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. It was a landscape—mountains in the background, a stream on the left, some animals grazing on the right. I couldn’t tell what kind of animals, could have been deer. Maybe it was just a print of some famous painting—available in any department store.

I hadn’t noticed before either that Anna was wearing a necklace in the photo—a small pendant dangling from a thin chain. Could have been heart-shaped, hard to tell. I thought how nice it would have been to have something so personal of hers, something I could keep near me all the time, something by which to remember her.

A knock on the door interrupted my melancholy. Naomi asked me if she could talk to me after Elmer left for the day. Looked like we were on the same wavelength. Two minutes later, there was another knock on the door. It was Naomi again. Minnie was on hold.

I tried to absorb everything Minnie was telling me, but she was talking so fast, all I got were bits and pieces—something about talking to Henry, who said the police had got it all wrong and his cousin could get in trouble. Finally, I asked her if I could come over later to hear it in person, and she agreed.

The afternoon moved at a snail’s pace because I was so anxious to hear what both Naomi and Minnie had to tell me. And then it occurred to me that I had planned to go to Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Hospital to look for birth information on Nora Edwards. That would likely take longer than Naomi would be willing to stay, and even if she was willing to stay late, I wanted to get to Minnie’s as soon as possible. Nora would just have to wait until tomorrow. I felt a little guilty about delaying a case involving finding someone else’s birth parent in favor of my own self-interest, but I figured one more day wouldn’t make any difference.

When Elmer finally left, I went out to the reception area to talk with Naomi.

“I hope this doesn’t come back to hurt me in the end, but I feel I have to tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“Elmer has been paying Danny to keep an eye on you and feed back to him what you’re doing.”

“What? What makes you think that?”

“I have eyes and ears.”

“I’m not surprised to hear he pays Danny for helping him—the same as I do—but why do you think it’s to watch me?”

“I’ve heard Danny tell him where you are, where you’re going to be, what cases you’re working on.”

I had told Danny when I hired him that what I worked on was confidential and not to be discussed with anyone but me. I thanked her for that tidbit of information and returned to my office to tidy up.

Naomi poked her head in my door.

“Good night, Miss Lindroth. I hope I didn’t stick my nose where it doesn’t belong. If I did, I apologize.”

“Don’t worry about it. I appreciate the information.”

“If what I said gets back to Mr. Berghorn, I’m sure he’ll fire me.”

“You have nothing to worry about with me.”

I wasn’t sure what I thought about what Naomi had told me. First of all, she had made the assumption that the money Elmer gave to Danny was compensation for watching me when it could have been for something else. Why would Elmer care where I was and what I was doing anyway? Just to be safe, I decided not to use Danny anymore. I would just have to be more selective about the process-server jobs I accepted.

I finished up and headed out to Minnie’s. Upon opening her door, she greeted me with a toothy smile and ushered me into the living room. She poured us each a glass of Scotch.

“So, Detective Lawless, what have you got for me?”

“Don’t you get saucy with me.”

Saucy?
“I was complimenting you!”

“Never you mind.”

I laughed to myself—that had been an expression my mother had often used.

“Anyway, like I started to tell you on the phone, Tymon and I met for lunch at Jake’s, and all I did was schmooze him because I didn’t want him to catch on to the real reason I wanted to be with him. So we talked about stupid stuff while we ate. I told him more about my Clarence, and he told me about how he had cared for his mother until she died. Stuff like that. So afterward, he went his way and I went mine, but as soon as he was out of sight, I went back into Jake’s, sat myself down at the bar, and ordered a beer.”

Now I couldn’t picture Minnie hoisting her squatty little body up onto a barstool and throwing back a few cold ones, but she had surprised me in other ways, so...

“At the risk of interrupting your story,” I said, “how do you feel about Tymon? Is he someone you could end up seeing?”

“Of course not. Why do you ask?”

“Because if he is, I don’t want you to feel obligated to keep—”

“Look, toots, give me credit for knowing what I’m doing. I’ve been around the block a few times remember.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Anyway, when I get to know the barkeep a little, I ask him if he happens to know Henry Sikes, and he says, ‘Sure, he’s part of the landscape around here.’ Then he kinda snickers, and I ask him what’s so funny, and he says to me in a low voice that Henry had disappeared once years ago and came back a different man. They all wondered who Henry had robbed ’cuz he went from living in a boarding house to buying a house of his own, and all of a sudden he had a nice new car, fancy duds, and a different woman on his arm all the time. All this and the guy had never worked an honest day in his life.”

“Henry left the boardinghouse right after Mark Smith—aka Marcus O’Gowan—died, right?”

“Who?”

“I forgot I didn’t tell you. You know Mark Smith? Well, his real name was Marcus O’Gowan.”

Minnie’s hands flew to her hips. “You’ve got to keep me better informed, Gracie.”

She got up from her chair and left the room. I couldn’t determine if she was mad at me or was just being flippant...in her own semi-humorous way. I tried to think of what else I hadn’t told her. When she didn’t return in a couple of minutes, I called her name.

“Be right there,” she shouted back.

When she returned, she had an envelope in her hand. She handed it to me.

“You want me to read this?” I asked her.

“Why else would I be handing it to you?”

I removed the letter from inside.

“Well, that fits in with what I found out about him, that he’s from Ireland and, in fact, not even a U.S. citizen. So it appears his family was trying to locate him. His mother was sick and—”

“If you believe everything in that letter.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Can I go back to my story?”

I nodded.

“You know, this stuff is better than
As the World Turns
. Maybe I should become a real PI. Anyway, I ask him where Henry lives, and he tells me a few blocks from here on Mozart. So I finish my little chat with barkeep and head over to Mozart.”