“And then?” I prompted when Voss stopped.
He looked sidelong at his mother. “He asked if I’d take a book back to the library for him, in case he couldn’t get home before it was overdue, so I said sure, and he went inside and came out with the book.”
“And did you?” his mother asked.
He scuffed the stairwell carpet with his bare foot. “I kind of forgot.”
“Then remember now and bring it down here. You know if there’s a fine, you have to pay it.”
Voss ran up the stairs. We heard thuds as he sorted through his room and then silence. Behind us Zach demanded to know what was going on.
“Back in a minute,” Jeanine called to her husband, then yelled up the stairs to Voss to bring the book down.
“I don’t know if it’s teenage boyness, or too much gaming and texting, but he has the attention span of a gnat. Voss! Now!”
We heard a few more thuds and some rustling, but after another minute went by, Jeanine went up the stairs. She came down, exasperated.
“He’s lost the book. I don’t want to solve Martin’s library problems, but I wish Voss could remember what he did with it.”
“Does he know what it was?” I asked.
Voss appeared behind her. “I don’t know,” he said unhappily. “The cover was weird, it showed someone stabbing the Statue of Liberty.”
Bookstore and library staffs’ favorite way to find a title: The cover was red. There was a picture of a shark/puppy/Statue of Liberty.
Jeanine shooed her younger son back to his room. I waited until I heard his door shut before I told her what I’d found yesterday in Palfry.
“I really need to talk to Toby, or to someone Martin would have confided in. It was a mess down there—”
Jeanine looked back into the living room at her husband. This time it was he who gave his head a minatory shake.
“We don’t want you bothering Toby,” Zachary said flatly. “We’ll call him and let you know what he says.”
Like Jari Liu. What was it about my face that made people feel I couldn’t talk to their staff or their children?
“I can’t promise not to talk to your son. I have to find someone who knows what was on Martin’s mind those last weeks he was home. Even if Toby doesn’t know, he could give me names of some of the other people they both know.”
“Toby’s a minor,” Zachary said. “It’s against the law for you to talk to him without our consent.”
“I’m not a cop, Mr. Susskind, I don’t have powers to arrest or try anyone, so that particular law doesn’t apply to me.”
Jeanine murmured an apology as she escorted me to the door.
“I’m used to it in my work,” I said. “If the book Martin handed to Voss turns up, will you call me and let me know the title?”
Jeanine promised. I could see her thinking that if she found the book it would make up for her husband’s brusqueness.
8
DINNER WITH THE KING OF SWEDEN
IT WAS PAST NINE when I left the Susskinds’, but I drove down to Lotty’s place anyway. We’d spoken briefly when she got home from the clinic. She hadn’t heard anything new from Judy Binder, but she wanted to know what I’d managed to learn.
“Is the Binder house still dripping in lace?” Lotty asked when we were sitting on the balcony overlooking Lake Michigan.
I’d found the lace oppressive myself but something in Lotty’s voice made me perversely want to defend Kitty Binder. “It’s beautiful work. She told me her grandmother taught her.”
“Yes, K?the’s grandmother was a skilled seamstress. Embroidery, lace, all those things, besides making dresses and drapes and mending my grandfather’s socks. I used to look down on her, attitudes I picked up from my grandmother, I’m afraid, although of course every woman of my Oma’s generation could embroider and even knit. When we all had to survive as best we could in the ghetto, Frau Saginor’s skills were in much higher demand than my grandmother’s gift as a hostess.” Lotty’s voice was tinged with bitterness.
“I was maladroit with Ms. Binder about her family. She had a snapshot of herself with her two sisters—”
“She told you she had sisters?” Lotty interrupted. “She was like me: an only child.”
I felt a lurch of uncertainty. “They were all in bathing suits,” I insisted. “Her parents and the three girls.”
“What did they look like, these soi-disant parents?” Lotty demanded.
“I didn’t get that close a look. Plump, jolly. The man had dark hair that was thinning in the middle, the woman, hard to say, she had a big straw hat on.”