Caleb Stone was not happy with his deputy’s declaration. He turned to August Schmidt and said in a surprisingly kind voice, “Mr. Schmidt, I’m afraid you have to come with me to the station. Just a little more conversation, where it’s quiet…” His voice trailed off.
Good Lord. That was the gentlest, most unthreatening arrest I could imagine. But to August Schmidt, shaking back and forth, the words spelled doom. He bellowed like a wounded animal, “Is wrong, is wrong. I begs you.”
Amos Moss kept yelling, “Admit it, admit it,” approaching the shaking man who kept muttering in German. When the deputy touched his sleeve, August Schmidt caught my eye and held it, a desperate stare that rattled me. The look said: Help me.
I couldn’t turn away. Help me.
The craziness of the hallway was shattered by the slamming of the front door. Christ Lempke lumbered in, dragging the dead leg against the hard marble floor. It made an echoey sound, eerie as nightmare, and I got chilled staring at the gnarled, bitter man moving toward us. No one said a word. When he drew closer, he stopped, tried to balance himself by leaning on a wall.
“Mr. Lempke,” Caleb Stone greeted him.
But the man exploded. “You no waits for me.”
“I just assumed you couldn’t make it…”
Lempke tried to straighten himself up, full-size, but he wobbled. “You see this leg that dies in that stupid war? You sees that?”
“I’m sorry, I…” The chief stopped, glancing at the blubbering August Schmidt.
Amos Moss jumped in. “Mr. Lempke, we got here a suspect in Frana’s murder.” He pointed at Schmidt.
Lempke looked at August. “This is your murderer? This man?” His laugh-a thin broken cackle, really-filled the hallway.
Amos Moss yelled, “He had a key…”
Caleb Stone held up his hand. “Mr. Lempke, we have more investigating to do…” A pause. “Maybe Mr. Schmidt can give us some answers about locked doors.”
“Is no matter now.”
“But justice…”
Lempke actually spoke out the side of his mouth, and his face twisted into a hideous mask, contorted and crimson. “Justice is myth in this America.”
I spoke out. “Frana deserves justice, no?”
Lempke looked at me, a creepy smile on his face. “You is reporter, no? Live on peoples’ disgrace and anger and pain. Shame shame shame on you. Shame. Foolish girl. What you know of justice?”
“Sir!”
“Frana her mother planned send her back to Germany, put her in convent, maybe. Now she is dead girl. Is probably die in time. Maybe. She disgrace family with this boy, this man. Who knows? She talk crazy to family. She run to New York to be on stage and paint herself maybe and bring great disgrace, more so, to us. The way she die to me disgrace.” No one spoke. “Last night we find deck of cards in her room. Cards for playing games.” For some reason he pointed at me. “Forbidden, this pleasure. Like dancing. Like…”
“Well,” I said cavalierly. “No one should die because of a card game.”
Lempke’s eyes got hard, dull. “You think games is for little Catholic girl? She wants to pedal a bicycle. Like circus girl. The Virgin Mary she frowns in heaven. Our people cross themselves in this sinful America. She…” He waved his hands in the air. “Enough. Now a tombstone will keep her good.”
Chapter Ten
I returned home from work exhausted. The events at the high school-and the subsequent, manic conversations in the city room-made me tense, almost ill. Matthias Boon, back from Milwaukee and in a surly mood, had minimalized his failed mission. All three drummers had been released because all three, evidently, had no connection with the murder of Frana. Boon disagreed. The Milwaukee police force, he insisted, was staffed by an assembly of “bumbling magpies, speaking in tongues,” taking the word of one particularly smooth-talking, shifty-eyed drummer. Boon also wasn’t happy he’d missed the scene at the high school…and the questioning of Schmidt. “So you’re saying the German strangled her and hid her body in the storeroom?”
“I never said that, sir.”
“Lust, Miss Ferber. Think about it.”
“I’d rather not.”
Boon snickered as I turned away.
I straggled home and was surprised to see Kathe Schmidt. When Fannie walked out of the back room where she and Kathe were cutting and sewing patterns, I whispered, “Why is she here?”
“Her mother sent her over.”
“Did you hear about her father?”
“Of course.” Fannie was testy. “It’s all over town. Kathe told me about it, in fact. She says it’s ridiculous.”
“Of course, it is. But shouldn’t she be home with her family?”
“Caleb Stone sent her father home, so he’s sleeping now, she said.”
“But doesn’t she want…”
Fannie shrugged. “Imagine detaining Mr. Schmidt for murder! Have people in this town lost their minds?”
“Yes, they have.”
Fannie eyed me suspiciously and left to tend to supper. Over her shoulder, she told me, “We’re having goose with cranberry sauce.”
When my mother returned from My Store, she questioned me. “Why is Kathe here?”
“She had nowhere else to go, I guess.”
“What does that mean? Don’t be sarcastic, Ed. Poor Kathe. The poor dear. When a family is suffering, daughters need to stay close to home. Everyone knows that.”
Curious, I walked to the back sitting room, a small alcove where I liked to read my novels during the icy winter months, a drafty space that looked out on white-crusted stone walls. Now, Fannie’s dress patterns covered a pinewood table, and Kathe, her back to me, was bent over the narrow table, snipping away with scissors. I cleared my throat, but Kathe was slow to look up.
“Kathe, I’m sorry about your father.”
I lost any sympathy for her because the look on her shiny face was hardly what I expected, some softening, some weepiness, some helplessness. Some-vulnerability. No, Kathe looked mean and fierce, eyes hard as polished agates, lips pressed into a thin angry line. Scissors suspended in the air, she wagged their points at me and glowered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Kathe dropped her eyes.
“Kathe, are you mad at me?”
“My father ain’t guilty of nothing.” I corrected the grammar in my head.
“Well, I know that.”
“Then why were you and the others there today…crucifying him? You and those people…”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“Yeah, like you didn’t chase down Jake in the park and make him talk about Frana.”
Well, true. “I’m a reporter. Frana Lempke-your friend-was murdered. I would think you’d want…”
“You want my father to be guilty…”
Outside, I noticed, it had started to rain, the heavy drops pinging and plopping against the window. For a second Kathe stared out into the rain; when she looked back at me, she appeared dazed.
“You’re making no sense, Kathe.”
She stabbed at the fabric with the scissors. Her shoulders hunched, tight. “Leave me alone.”
“So your father is back home?”
Kathe seethed, silent.
Intuitively I sensed that only one subject would get Kathe talking. “What does Jake Smuddie have to do with this?”
“What?”
“Have you spoken to Jake since…since the park?”
“No. He won’t talk to me. Guess whose fault that is.”
“Well, he’s hurting.”
“Maybe if you left him alone…”
“Did you know that he was still pursuing Frana?” It was a cruel line, said deliberately.
“I ain’t a fool. I had evidence.”
“Evidence?”
For a second the rain distracted her. Then she raised her chin and locked her eyes on me. “I knew he went there that night because Frana told me the next morning. The day she died, in fact. She tossed it in my face like a…a insult. She didn’t want him around because she was leaving Appleton with that man or something. But she knew how to hurt me. ‘Jake came to my window last night,’ she said. Just like that. Laughing. ‘He begged me!’ She laughed and said, ‘My uncle was gonna kill him.’ She thought the whole thing was real funny. You know, I couldn’t wait for her to get on that train with some old fool who’d use her and then abandon her on some New York street like a dirty rag or something. It ain’t right what she did to me.”