The Darkness Knows (16 page)

“Charlie, I don't see why—” She stopped short.

Vivian's mother stood openmouthed over the copy of the
Tribune
. She picked up the paper, unfolded it, and laid it back down on the table, smoothing the middle crease with her fingertips. She continued reading for a few more seconds in silence before finally looking up at her daughter. The shock was still evident on her face, but her voice rang out like a bell.

“What's all this?” she asked.

Vivian glanced at Charlie, noticing that he'd had enough time to flip the copy of the far-more-incriminating
Patriot
open to an inside page, a double spread on fall fashions.

“Oh, it's nothing,” Vivian said, trying to sound breezy. She sauntered over to her chair and sat down, making an elaborate show of unfolding her napkin and letting it float gracefully into her lap.

“It looks like something to me,” her mother said. She looked from Vivian to Charlie.

“A lot of claptrap, Mrs. Witchell, that's all,” Charlie said. “Trumped-up stories to sell papers.”

“Don't double-talk me,” Mrs. Witchell sniffed.

“They found out about the fan letter is all,” Vivian said, holding a heaping forkful of eggs she had no intention of eating. “It was only a matter of time. Everything's fine. Well, not exactly fine, but no worse than yesterday.” Vivian's eyes flicked over to Charlie.

“Who phoned just now?” Vivian's mother asked.

“Oh, that was Graham,” Vivian said.

“Graham Yarborough?”

“Yes, he's taking me out to Chez Paree tonight,” Vivian said. She made the mistake of looking at Charlie again. The scowl seemed to have taken up permanent residence on his face.

“Well, well,” Mrs. Witchell said. She finally took a seat at the table. “That's a brave man. But are you sure that's wise—going out at a time like this?”

“I'll be with her, Mrs. Witchell,” Charlie said. “I won't let anything happen.”

Vivian sighed and set the fork down on her plate.

Vivian's mother lowered her chin to her chest, glancing from Charlie to Vivian and back to Charlie. “You have something suitable to wear?” she asked, turning to Vivian.

“Well, that's just it. I don't think I have anything suitable,” Vivian said, jutting her lower lip out ever so slightly. Then a deliciously perfect idea struck her. “But Charlie's just agreed to accompany me downtown for a little shopping trip this morning to remedy that problem. Haven't you, Mr. Haverman?” Vivian smiled brightly at the detective.

Charlie looked at her with narrowed eyes. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. “Yes,” he said, never taking his eyes from Vivian's. “That's right.”

The foundling home was on the Near West Side of Chicago, roughly two miles directly west of where Vivian spent most of her days at WCHI. Instead of driving through downtown, however, Charlie had skirted the city, driving west on Division through the industrial area by the Chicago River. There had been nothing but stony silence from the driver's seat for the first ten minutes of the drive. Vivian studied Charlie's profile against the backdrop of the sullen warehouses and smoke-belching factories. Brows lowered, chin jutting forward ever so slightly—he was angry, no doubt about it. When Charlie finally spoke, it was as if he'd been following her train of thought.

“You're a piece of work, you know that?” he said, taking his eyes from the road to fix her with an icy stare.

Vivian stared right back. “
I'm
a piece of work? You're the one trying to cut me out of all of this.”

“For good reason.”

“And that is…?”

“You're a distraction.”

Vivian turned her face to the window to hide her smile. She couldn't mistake that particular lilt in his voice on the word “distraction.” A distraction was something you couldn't stop thinking about. Something your mind returned to again and again—like that kiss last night. Maybe he'd been thinking about it too?

“You're always twisting ankles and getting shot at…”

Vivian's smile faltered. He was teasing her, of course, but now she understood that what he'd really meant to call her just now was not a distraction but a nuisance. A nuisance was never endearing. A nuisance wasn't something you
wanted
to think about. She turned back to face him.

“Well, you can't cut me out. This involves me too. The foundling home was my idea, you know, and I'd find my way there with or without you.”

Charlie sighed, but there was a smile at the corner of his mouth. “You always get your way, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you didn't have to resort to cheap tricks.”

“How do you think I always get my way?”

He snorted softly and stopped the Packard at a red light with a shuddering jerk. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead for a moment and then glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.

“What happens when you come home without a new dress?” he finally asked.

Vivian waved the question off. “Mother couldn't care less about that. She just wants to make sure I put on a good show for the eligible young man. By the way,” she added, thinking back to the scene at breakfast. “What did you do with that copy of the
Patriot
?”

“Left it on the dining room table for your mother,” he answered smoothly, shifting the car into gear and pressing on the accelerator. The engine made a satisfying roar, and he nodded slightly to himself at hearing it.

“You didn't.” Vivian gripped his arm, panicked.

Charlie turned to her with the merest suggestion of a smirk on his lips. “If you must know, I snuck it out under my coat and threw it in a garbage can on the way to the car,” he said.

Vivian let go of his arm and sat back in her seat. She was thankful for the subterfuge, but it wouldn't matter in the long run. Her mother would find another copy. She would see the article.

Vivian paused a moment to let the tension ease a bit more before asking, “Do you suppose my mother's in any danger?”

“I don't think so. She's been instructed to stay home where the policemen can protect her,” he said. But then he turned suddenly, thick brows knit together in accusation. “Why in the hell didn't you cancel your date with Yarborough like I told you to do?” he asked.

Vivian looked down at her hands, unwilling to meet Charlie's accusatory glare, and shrugged. “Graham was already suspicious of me leaving the masquerade early,” she said. “I couldn't cancel our date on such short notice. He'd be even more suspicious.”

“So let him be suspicious,” Charlie said.

“I can't do that.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If I gave him any excuse, he'd just…”

“He'd just what?” Charlie asked impatiently.

He'd just take Frances out instead
, she thought. Then she shook her head. It was silly. Why did she even care? Graham could have Frances Barrow if that's what he wanted. Perhaps the real reason she'd agreed to go out with him tonight had more to do with sticking it to Frances than anything else. Perhaps with this date Vivian could win, if not the war, then at least one small battle. Her unfinished sentence hung there in the silence between them.

Charlie glanced at her, brow wrinkled. “He's really got you dangling on a line, hasn't he?”

“Dangling on a line?” she repeated.

Charlie fixed her with a stare. “How can you not see that?”

Vivian turned to look out the window. She exhaled heavily and watched her breath fog the glass. He was right, of course. She'd suspected the same thing since she'd spied Graham in the coat closet with Frances, but she wasn't about to give Charlie the satisfaction of letting him know that. Who did he think he was—her own personal agony aunt? “What do you know about it anyway?” she said into the glass.

“I know more than you think I do,” he said almost under his breath.

Vivian pursed her lips together in irritation.

“No, I'm not at all happy about this little rendezvous tonight,” Charlie continued.

“Oh?” She couldn't help but glance at his mouth again. She couldn't seem to help herself.

Charlie's eyes met hers for an instant before he turned his attention back to the road.

“Your life is in danger,” he said, pulling the car to a stop in front of a large Victorian building of mellow cream brick. He put the car in park, and the engine died with a cough and a rumble. He turned to her, expression deadly serious. “You should be staying home where I can protect you.”

Vivian let her breath out in another long sigh. “Oh,” she said.

“But barring drugging you and tying you to a chair like a villain in your radio show, I don't think I can stop you from poking your nose into this investigation.” Charlie stared intently at her for a few seconds.

“You're right,” Vivian said, meeting his steely gaze with one of her own and lifting her chin defiantly. “You can't stop me.”

The building was larger than Vivian had expected and better maintained. It was a substantial, light-brick structure built near the end of the last century, the peaked dormer windows at the roofline speaking to its Victorian pedigree. There were four floors housing abandoned children, as well as a hospital for impoverished expectant mothers who would likely leave their babies at the orphanage.

She and Charlie were ushered briskly into a sterile waiting area outside the head matron's office. Charlie stood at the window, gazing out onto the lawn and the small group of children that played there, supervised by several nurses. Vivian sat in a hard, stiff-backed chair surveying a brochure that spoke in sweepingly bland terms of the charity's history and the services it currently provided to the community.

“Honestly, I didn't know places like this existed anymore,” Vivian said, setting the thin pamphlet aside. “It's not at all what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” Charlie asked from his station at the window.

Vivian glanced around the spotless white room. “Something darker, more Dickensian. You know,
Oliver Twist
: dirty urchins in ragged clothing…”

She stood and joined Charlie at the window. The children on the lawn were in the midst of a spirited game of blindman's bluff. The “blind man” was a boy of about eight. An unruly mop of auburn hair tumbled over the blindfold covering his eyes. As Vivian watched, he lurched unsteadily toward a young girl. The girl dodged the boy's hand at the very last moment, and she laughed as his fingertips brushed one of her long, dark braids.

“This isn't a story,” Charlie said, his profile stern. “These are real children.”

“I know,” Vivian said quietly.

The boy jerked to the right, catching a much smaller boy squarely around the middle. He pulled him off his feet in a jovial bear hug while the smaller boy shrieked with surprise and pleasure.

Charlie opened his mouth to say something more but shut it again and remained silent.

“You've been here before?” she asked after a long moment.

Charlie glanced at her, then back out the window before he answered. “Yes,” he said.

“It seems like a nice place,” Vivian continued. “Clean anyway.” She smiled as a tiny boy came into view, toddling across the lawn toward the group of children. His chubby fingers clutched those of a petite nurse in a crisp, white uniform, and he smiled broadly as he came into earshot of the happy shouts of the playing children. Vivian's heart twisted in empathy as the little boy struggled to pull away from the nurse, eager to join the group. “Are all of these children really just abandoned?” she asked.

“Yes,” Charlie answered simply. “Most handed over by mothers who've been widowed, parents who can't provide any longer, things like that.”

Charlie had made it clear that there was nothing romantic about children being in an orphanage, but Vivian couldn't help visualizing the scene as etched in a Victorian melodrama: a sleeping baby swaddled against the cold of a long, dark night lying in a basket on the back stoop of this building.

“They really must be desperate to give up their children,” she said.

Charlie sighed and turned away from the window. “That's what I want to believe too.”

Vivian supposed the hard economic times had kept the place not only in business, but also thriving. The Depression had forced terrible choices on desperate parents. She knew that much, even if her only exposure to their plight was of the secondhand newsreel variety. She had seen the photo of the migrant mother and watched the dust cut a swath of choking black across the Oklahoma Panhandle, but nothing had brought it home to her like actually seeing the children who had lived this tragedy, all of these little souls alone in the world.

It was quite fashionable these days for celebrity couples to adopt from an orphanage. She'd read about it nearly every week in the gossip magazines. Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, and Al Jolson had all adopted children from an orphanage in the suburb of Chicago, as a matter of fact. She eyed the children outside, who were now being gently herded into a line. Would she do something like that when she became a bona fide star? She imagined a posed portrait of herself with the small, pudgy, dark-haired boy from outside and a tall man, his face a blank. Was that what she wanted, she wondered. Then she heard purposeful footfalls approaching from down the hall.

A tall woman, perhaps fifty years of age, entered the room dressed in a severe black habit. Her bare face was encased in a white wimple, her papery skin wrinkled at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She nodded to Charlie and then Vivian and ushered them to an oak door with a large frosted window with
Matron
stenciled on it in thick, black letters. The nun motioned to two chairs in the room before taking a seat behind an enormous wooden desk.

“Mr. Haverman,” she said. “Nice to see you again. I trust you're well?” She smiled serenely at him.

“Yes, Sister Bernadine, quite well. Thank you.” He extended an arm toward Vivian. “This is my friend, Vivian Witchell.”

“Miss Witchell,” the nun said, turning her gaze to Vivian. Her eyes were a brilliant blue and stood out in stark contrast to the drabness of her habit.

“Hello,” Vivian said, unsure of how to address a nun.

The nun placed her hands on top of the desk and knit her fingers together. “Now,” she said. “What can I do for you two?”

“Did you know a Marjorie Fox, Sister?” Charlie asked.

The woman tented her fingers together under her chin. “No, I don't believe so. Should I?”

“I'm not sure,” Charlie said. “She is—
was
—a radio actress.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Haverman.” The nun smiled kindly at him. “I haven't much time for radio.”

Charlie leaned forward in his chair. “Sister, Mrs. Fox was murdered two days ago.”

“Good heavens.” Sister Bernadine crossed herself and looked up at the ceiling. She mumbled a quick prayer under her breath, then fixed her gaze on Charlie. “How can I be of help?”

“We have reason to believe that Mrs. Fox had ties to the foundling home.”

The nun caught her lower lip between her teeth as she thought. “Marjorie Fox, you said?” She shook her head slowly back and forth. “I don't recognize that name.”

“She's never been here? Never met with you? Isn't on any sort of mailing list?” Charlie's questions were rapid-fire, but the nun's calm expression never changed.

“Not to my knowledge,” she said.

“Mr. Hart had never discussed a benefit for the home involving Mrs. Fox?”

“A benefit?” Her face brightened. “Oh yes, Mr. Hart
had
mentioned organizing a benefit the last time I spoke with him, but he didn't offer any particulars.”

“Do you speak with Mr. Hart often?” Vivian asked.

“Not that much anymore, really. Once or twice a year. He used to be much more actively involved.” Sister Bernadine pulled out a pocket watch from within the folds of her habit. She frowned as if the time was not at all what she expected it to be.

“How well do you know Mr. Hart?” Vivian asked, ignoring the obvious hint that their time for questions was quickly drawing to a close.

Sister Bernadine glanced up at Vivian, then slipped the watch back into her robes.

“He's been on the board since I started here,” she said, furrowing her brow. “That was over twenty years ago now, but I know he was also here some time before I arrived.”

Something niggled at Vivian's brain, but she couldn't put a finger on what it was.

“Sister,” Vivian began. “I'm curious why someone like Mr. Hart would be so involved with a foundling home. Did he ever explain to you over those twenty years, even mention in passing, why he was so passionate about the home?”

Sister Bernadine sat back in her chair. “Only vaguely. He'd mentioned that he'd had a rough childhood. That led him to wanting to take care of the children that no one wanted. He hoped to help find them loving homes, if he could.”

“Had he adopted from the home himself?”

Sister Bernadine's kindly smile faded entirely.

“Those records are confidential, Miss Witchell. And as I've told Mr. Haverman before, any records prior to 1930 were lost in a fire several years ago.”

Vivian glanced at Charlie. Before? He'd been here to inquire about adoption records before?

The nun pushed herself out of her chair and stood, her back ramrod straight, the severe black and white of the habit giving her a somewhat regal bearing. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I have another appointment.”

“Yes, of course.” Charlie stood too. His eyes darted to Vivian and then back to Sister Bernadine. “Thank you for your time, Sister,” he said.

Sister Bernadine held one hand in front of her chest, fingers together and pointed up. “May God save and keep you,” she said before sweeping out of the room.