“When did you last see your daughter?” I finally asked.
Kitty’s lips tightened. “She came to her father’s funeral. She showed up in black, wearing a big hat, and crying as if she’d been nursing Len day and night. Of course, he was always soft with her, so soft you’d have thought she might come around more when she learned he was sick. Or maybe she did, she probably went to see him at the shop more times than he let on to me. He knew I didn’t like him giving her money. I don’t imagine a drop will fall from her eyes when I’m gone.”
And if she’s dead, will a drop fall from your eyes? I wondered.
“Can I talk to your grandson? Maybe he—”
“You leave Martin alone,” she said, her tone menacing.
“How old is he?” I asked, as if she hadn’t spoken.
“Old enough to know his mother is poison through and through.”
I got up and went to look at the framed photos. A young Kitty wearing a New Look suit, carrying a bouquet, stared sternly at the camera. The man next to her, in a U.S. Army uniform with his combat ribbons on his chest, black hair slicked away from his forehead, beamed with pride. They’d met in post-war Germany, Lotty had said. From the man’s uniform, I assumed they’d married there. It was a time when many women wore their best suits to their weddings, not a bridal gown. My own mother was married in an outfit not much different, but my dad had filled her arms with roses.
In another photo, the same man, considerably older, but still wearing a proud smile, was standing at a bima with a thin, serious boy. The grandson’s bar mitzvah. The two also appeared behind a complicated collection of glass tubes and coiled wires, with a “First Place” ribbon attached to the table. Same proud smile on Grandpa, same serious look from the youth. The only other photo was a faded snapshot, three teenage girls and a plump couple. They all wore old-fashioned swimsuits and were grinning at the camera. Kitty was in the middle; she, too, was smiling.
“Are those your sisters?” I ventured, nodding at the snapshot.
Her face tightened further, but she nodded fractionally.
“Is it possible your daughter went to one of—”
“Oh!” Her cry was almost a scream of pain. “How can you? How can you be so cruel?”
My stomach twisted. I should have known, Jewish refugee from Vienna: her family, like Lotty’s, had likely been murdered.
“Forgive me.” I rolled a lace-covered hassock up next to her chair so that my head was lower than hers. “I didn’t know, I wasn’t thinking. Please talk to me about your daughter and your grandson. It’s he you’re worried about, isn’t it? If you can describe him to me, I may be able to tell you if he’s the person whose body I found yesterday.”
“That’s him you were looking at just now.” Her fingers twisted so tightly in her lap that the joints turned white.
“How old is he now?”
“He turned twenty in May.”
“The man I found yesterday was probably ten or fifteen years older than that,” I said, “although his body was so damaged I can’t be a hundred percent sure. When did you last see Martin?”
She scowled but didn’t answer. She was embarrassed: perhaps Martin had followed his mother in fleeing this musty house with its drawn blinds, its tightly sealed windows.
“Does he work? Go to school?” I asked.
“He takes a few night classes down at Circle, but he works for a living, like my family always has.”
“Ms. Binder, what is the problem? Is he doing work that you think will get him in trouble?”
“Of course not,” she bristled. “He’s nothing like his mother, which just proves all that environment influence they throw at you is nonsense. If he could grow up here and be a decent, hardworking boy, then his mother could have, too, if she hadn’t had such a weak nature.”
“Then what are you worried about?” I asked.
She twisted her fingers into such tight knots that I couldn’t see how she stood the pain. “He took off ten days ago,” she whispered. “No one knows where he is.”
4
MARTIN’S CAVE
I GOT THE STORY out of Kitty in tiny pieces, as if I were prying gold from a rockface. Martin worked at a company in Northbrook as some kind of computer technician. He took a few night classes at the University of Illinois’s Chicago Circle campus, but he made good money at the place he worked: Kitty didn’t think he needed a college degree.
Martin hadn’t talked much about the job, but he seemed to like it, he often worked late even though he wasn’t paid overtime. “I keep telling him, they’re just taking advantage, but he says he learns so much he’s coming out ahead. Used to say, anyway.”