“It was our money,” she cried. “Papa was taking our money and giving it to Kitty and her drug-addict daughter. And then the daughter found the passbook. She actually came down to the Greenwood Avenue house when Mama was still alive! It was terrible—she was drunk or on drugs. Mama called the police, she called me, it was such a shock, the first she knew about Papa stealing money out of her own children’s mouths. And Julius, he was still living at home, and he was almost forty by then! He asked if Mama thought it was worth murdering Kitty’s daughter. He sat and laughed and said he could do it for a fee.”
Herta’s face turned alarmingly red. I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing I shouldn’t blurt out the first thoughts in my own mind: How could you keep pretending after seeing the bank account that Kitty wasn’t your sister? And what happened to all that Nobel Prize money?
“When was that?” I asked instead. “When Judy was thirteen and already precocious enough to guess something was up with her mother and your father?”
“Not then, a few years later. Judy found the bank book and tried to get money from the bank. I don’t know how she found out that Papa had put money into the account—I wouldn’t put it past Kitty to tell her she should come down here and ask us for it. Judy came three times, I think it was: that first time, when Mama was still alive, and then when she saw the news about Mama’s death! She showed up at the funeral, oh my God, that was terrible!”
“Then Martin came, what a month ago? And you thought he was going to pick up where Judy left off.”
“He kept asking about Martina,” Herta whispered. “What did I know about her work? He was implying that Papa stole work from her! I knew then he wanted me to say the Nobel Prize should have been Martina’s! He was going to demand that we give the prize money to him.”
“Is that what he said, or what you were scared he would say?”
“I told him the police would be coming if he said one more word! The idea that Papa would steal, let alone that the ideas of a sewing woman’s daughter were worth stealing!”
This time I couldn’t stop myself blurting out, “What, the fact that Martina’s mother sewed for a living meant Martina wasn’t capable of creative thought? If your father’s ideas were as embalmed as your own, I imagine he did have to steal from his students.”
Not surprisingly, that ended our conversation. I tried to regroup, but Herta picked up the phone to call the doorman. I left before he came up to escort me out.
25
HIGH SHERIFF AND POLICE, RIDING AFTER ME
OVER AT MY OFFICE, I tried to piece together what Herta Dzornen had said with what I knew about Martin’s disappearance. When he went to Palfry, he found the bank book, which made Martin visit Herta and Julius Dzornen. Herta said Julius once offered to kill Judy Binder. Had that been a tasteless joke, or was that how Julius afforded the birdseed for all those feeders? Anyway, Judy was still alive, so if Julius was a hitman, he was singularly ineffectual.
I slammed my pen against the desktop in frustration. It was high time I started paying attention to my other clients. I jotted my notes from Herta into the Martin Binder case file and closed the folder.
True, it was Sunday, but equally true, I was days behind on my work. Around one-thirty, when I broke for lunch, I remembered that I’d sent an e-mail to the Cheviot labs, telling them I’d be bringing the drawers and the paper in. I left a message on my account manager’s voice mail to say the job was off.
I stopped a little before six, feeling incredibly virtuous with the amount of work I’d cleared. The most important report, for Darraugh Graham, was done and e-mailed. Most of the others were close to finished. I’d be able to send out invoices on Monday and end September in the black—if I didn’t count the six-figure legal bill I was paying down.
One of my friends plays on a tag football team on the South Side. On an impulse, before going over to the park, I drove to Julius Dzornen’s coach house. A couple of kids were playing on the swing set, arguing in shrill voices. They stopped to watch me bang on the coach house door: I was a novelty, a visitor to the sullen recluse who lived behind them.
Julius again took his time answering, but finally opened the door. He was wearing baggy khakis and an old T-shirt, but no shoes or socks. “Herta told me you’d been over there bugging her about the Binder woman’s money. If you think you can get any out of me, you have the power to squeeze blood from a rock.”
I leaned against the jamb so that he wouldn’t be able to slam the door on me. “Nope. I’m not here about the money. Herta spent all Judy’s money on her kids’ orthodonture and I know you don’t have any. Herta told me you offered to kill Judy because she’d upset your mom so badly. Is that what happened fifty years ago? You killed someone but the detectives never arrested you?”