Cold Morning (8 page)

Chapter Seven

That afternoon I accompanied Aleck as he made an excursion to Hopewell to survey the Lindbergh homestead. We'd seen the awful pictures of that white home, stark, unfinished against a winter landscape, newsreel renderings that included that preposterous makeshift ladder placed against the side of the house, its top rungs below the window of the baby's nursery—the point of entry for the kidnapper. Aleck wanted to describe his own visceral reaction on encountering the home, where no one now lived, the Lindberghs in seclusion at Anne's mother's Next Day Hill mansion or, once in Flemington, staying outside of town. The Lindberghs would never return to that Hopewell mansion.

“Edna dear,” Aleck said as we cruised along, “you're awfully quiet this afternoon.”

I hadn't told him about my visit to Cody Lee Thomas and, of course, my sudden encounter with the most hated man in America, Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Frankly, I didn't know how to frame my words, at a loss to sort out the welter of mixed emotions that flooded me in the cramped police station and jail. Bruno—an ordinary man illuminated against a backdrop of national frenzy. Bruno—I saw a dead man.

“A sleepless night,” I lied.

Aleck eyed me curiously, not trusting my words.

Our driver was Marcus Wood, and I thanked God for that. Willie's insistent rattling voice, like hail on a corrugated tin roof, would have driven me to distraction. Instead, Marcus was a driver who rarely spoke, his eyes always straight ahead as though expecting disaster. A smooth, careful driver, he nevertheless had the casual flippant air of so many young men in a hurry, those jazz-age, zoot-suited boys who twenty-three skedooed their skittish girls into the backseats of Model T Fords. Marcus was probably in his early thirties, a dandyish sort who had abundant black, oiled hair, a hammered Leyendecker jaw, and watery blue eyes that I found utterly charming.

Nattily dressed in a double-breasted uniform that looked better on him than on the ancient Willie, Marcus breezed along, often nodding his head as though listening to a popular radio ditty in his head. He often seemed off in his own thoughts. Addressed once about the road conditions—the traffic out of the small town was bumper-to-bumper, and maddening—he didn't answer, and I realized he wasn't listening to us. That disturbed me, but I still preferred his indifference to Willie's buttinsky tactics. At one point, slowing behind a milk wagon, he pointed to a movie marquee at the Palace.
Murder in the Clouds,
starring Ann Dvorak and Lyle Talbot. He twisted his head to the left, smiled to himself, and mouthed the word:
ironic
. It certainly was.

He'd driven for us once before, a short spin somewhere out of town, and at the time Aleck had fussed. He later insinuated that Marcus was too good-looking to maneuver a car safely. “I don't trust young men who remember too fondly the dandyish world of Rudolph Valentino.” He'd added, “The wave of a young girl from another car and you and I are smashed to smithereens against an inconvenient tree.”

I didn't care—I enjoyed his classic profile, that turned Roman nose and jutting chin and Arrow Shirt-model looks. True, he seemed out of place silhouetted against the drab Jersey landscape of ice-frosted trees and wasted farm fields and sagging Cape Cod bungalows.

Unfortunately we arrived at Hopewell near dusk, though the January sunset of red and orange and yellow ribbons provided a postcard backdrop for the stark white Romanesque-styled mansion set against the dark woods. In a remote part of Jersey, this home was ten miles north of Princeton, true, but really tucked into the inaccessible wilderness of the Sourland Mountains. I thought of Cora Lee in her tarpaper shack deep in the woods nearby. Poor, grubbing farmers. The whitewashed fieldstone and stucco home, with its high-angled peaks and gabled slate roof, seemed a throwback to a medieval fortress. An incongruous white picket fence sloped down the driveway.

Aleck scribbled some notes about the desolation—“Why would Colonel Lindbergh choose so distant a spot to build—and the openness? Lord, you can walk up to the mansion without preamble.”

“Which someone did,” I remarked.

“It's so open,” Aleck repeated.

I stared through the gathering darkness. The mansion was largely dark, but lights were on in some rooms. The light in the upper nursery, I noticed—how well I remembered that shot from the newsreels. That ladder placed up against the white stucco. Now a line of state troopers blocked the front entrance, and a burly trooper, standing at the ready, watched us closely. His hand was raised: no further.

Marcus braked the car.

Aleck began reciting the opening lines of a column I knew he was writing in his head. “On a windy March night, three years ago, a lone kidnapper, carrying a homemade ladder, slipped across the bleak yard of Colonel and Anne Lindbergh.”

I broke in. “Melodramatic, Aleck.”

“But true.”

“The court has to prove Bruno Hauptmann was here. Otherwise there is no case. Witnesses?”

Aleck cleared his throat. “A baby lay in his cradle, sleeping, tucked in.”

“I can't imagine a single man, a stranger to these parts, approaching the house,” I said.

“Well, he did.”

“Too many unanswered questions. How did he know where the nursery was? The Lindberghs had never been at Hopewell on a Tuesday night. Who told him? How did he know one of the shutters was warped and couldn't be locked? Colonel Lindbergh said he heard a crack—like a rung of a ladder snapped—while he sat downstairs. It was nine-thirty or so at night—four or five people awake and moving about the house. Why wouldn't Bruno wait until everyone was in bed?”

Aleck was annoyed. “Stop this, Edna. What are you, his lawyer?”

I fumed. “I'm asking intelligent questions.”

“A lone vulture, that Bruno. He wanted to destroy an American hero. The Lone Eagle.”

“Why were all the prints wiped clean in the nursery? All of them gone.”

Aleck burst out, “Enough!”

“An inside job,” I mumbled, “and the state police trampled on the evidence, neglected to make an imprint of the one footprint in the mud, didn't measure tire prints. Colonel Schwarzkopf…”

A phony laugh from Aleck as he tapped Marcus on the shoulder. “Enough. Turn around.”

The car moved.

“Marcus, my lad, would you live in such a home?” Aleck asked.

Marcus flicked his head back and smiled. “These days I live in one room in a rooming house on the edge of Flemington. I bet the foyer in there”—he pointed back to the mansion—“is bigger than my room.” He glanced back at me. “And across the hall from me is Willie who snores like a locomotive in a tunnel.”

“But would you live in such a house if you had all the money in the world?”

Marcus deliberated for a moment, taking the question too seriously. “No.”

“Why not?” Aleck persisted.

“People who live in such houses…” He changed the course of his sentence. “People who have too many rooms are always lonely.”

“Let me write that down,” Aleck roared.

“Aleck, for God's sake,” I said.

But Marcus was smiling broadly, enjoying the moment. “I'm afraid I heard that somewhere. I never say anything original.”

“Neither does Aleck,” I hummed.

Aleck let out a loud whoop, and I smiled.

Back on the road, I watched light sleet falling on the road, and asked Aleck, “Do you realize there was
no
mention of Annabel Biggs' murder in the press today?”

He'd been lolling with his eyes closed. “That's because they have the killer.”

“I'm not so sure.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Now what does that mean?”

“Remember Willie said his mother was his alibi.”

He squinted, interested. “Of course, Ferb, a mother believes her son.”

“Who knows if he really did it?”

“Edna, this has nothing to do with you.”

“Oh, but it does. A woman murdered, then dismissed.”

Aleck tapped Marcus on the shoulder again. “Marcus, my good man, did you read about the murder of the waitress at the Union Hotel Café?”

“Yes, a small piece in the
Democrat
.”

“You read it?” I wondered.

“Well, Willie kept talking about it to a lot of the drivers.”

“Did you ever meet her?” I asked.

He scoffed. “Drivers don't eat in that café.” He glanced back. “A hot plate in my room.”

“You have family around here?”

“Up to Newark.”

“Not a hometown boy like…Willie?” I asked.

Now he chuckled. “Not quite. Hayseed and manure…and smelly cigars. Willie has the country in his bones.”

“And you don't?” From Aleck.

“When this trial is over and the money dries up, I'm back to a city.”

“What city?” From me.

“Well, any city'll do, but Newark is a start.”

“The trial can't last forever,” I commented.

For the first time he looked back into my face and the car swerved onto the shoulder of the road. “Hauptmann has to die,” he said, flat out, seething.

“What?” Aleck bellowed.

“An illegal immigrant here to take jobs from American-born citizens. Come on, think about it. A depression in this country.”

“But you think he is guilty? And he has to die?” Aleck asked.

“Being illegal shouldn't be a death sentence,” I offered.

“Yeah, but murder should.”

“If he did it.”

Again the dismissive laugh. “Oh, he did.”

“You don't like foreigners?” asked Aleck.

“Foreigners everywhere. Look at this Annabel woman. She came here to these shores looking for…” He paused.

“Opportunity?” I ventured.

“Yeah,” he said snidely, “opportunity. That's the word, I guess. Her and Hauptmann and millions of others. She should have stayed in England. He should have stayed in Germany. In prison there.”

“But why?” I asked.

He glanced back, puzzled. “Hey, America is a dangerous place.” He snickered. “Come to New Jersey and they'll murder you.”

“Hauptmann?”

“Yeah, they're gonna kill him, too.”

“You're a grim young man,” I said.

“No, ma'am, I'm a guy who looks at the world straight on. You learn that by driving a car. You can never take your eyes off the road.”

Aleck looked perplexed. “If you do, what happens?”

“They'll get you. They always do.”

Aleck shot me a look but lapsed into silence, tucking his head into his chest.

Chapter Eight

Peggy Crispen was expecting someone else to knock on her door. A short rap as I glanced at Aleck at my side, and the door flew open, a smiling Peggy ready to say something. Aleck was catching his breath after walking up the one flight of stairs in the boardinghouse. Peggy clutched the sweater she had draped over her shoulders, pulling it together and holding it at her neck, as though she'd been surprised in the process of dressing. Or undressing. She jumped back, the smile disappearing.

“I don't understand,” she let out.

“Miss Crispen,” I began, “a few moments of your time?”

But she was looking at Aleck and not at me, and muttered, “What is this about?”

“Hello, we've met before in the café. I'm Edna Ferber, and this is Aleck Woollcott. We're writers from New York and…” I stopped because her face closed in, her eyes shrouded. She turned back into the room, as though to flee, but finally looked back, tapped her foot impatiently, and grumbled.

“I ain't talking to any more reporters.”

“You've talked to reporters?” That surprised me.

“This Joshua Flagg guy keeps knocking, says he needs to…”

Aleck broke in, his voice silky, a twitch at the corners of his lips, a twinkle in his eyes. I got alarmed by the sudden transformation as he rolled his head back and forth, some feeble mimicry of a
bon vivant
on the town. “My dear, we don't mean to bother you, but our concern is
real
. This sad story, a young beautiful woman, a stranger to our shores, murdered by a rejected boyfriend, well, it must be traumatic for you, I'm sure.” He went on, insipid drivel doubtless appropriated from a tattered copy of
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
or
Pollyanna
, but I could see Peggy softening, her body relaxing, her shoulders dropping, her head inclined coyly. A little amused, I gaped at Aleck, this overflowing man with the soft woman's hips and waterfall chins, a man who usually generated no such masculine heat, none really, a notoriously sexless raconteur of the old Algonquin Round Table, who had long eschewed romance and intrigue. Obviously he'd missed his calling—he should have been starring on the Broadway boards.

He had fought me about visiting the hapless Peggy Crispen, who'd shared a room with Annabel Biggs. On the stroll over he'd stressed that I was out of line.

“But why?” I'd insisted.

“There is no reason to visit this…this Peggy Crispen.”

“She was Annabel Biggs' roommate—and a waitress who worked with her.”

“So what?” He'd stopped to catch his breath. “You're already covering
on
e story, Edna. The one the
Times
is
paying
you for. This cheap murder is trivial stuff.”

“I need to look into this story.”

“For what reason?” Exasperated, he pointed a finger at me. “Backwoods fornication is never original.”

“Really, Aleck.”

“Lascivious louts and wanton waitresses.” He grinned. “How Victorian parlor of you.”

Yet he'd agreed to accompany me, though hesitantly, insisting the wayward corners of small-town Flemington, once we departed from Main Street, were havens of immoral behavior and unseemly conduct. “I was in France during the Great War,” he told me. “I've seen the dregs.”

I'd rolled my tongue into the corner of my cheek. “Well, I haunt the echoey alleys of Broadway, Aleck, where you maintain your warren. So I know firsthand the darkness at the end of the tunnel.”

“You think you're clever, my darling. Please leave
that
to me.”

Peggy Crispen occupied a small room on the second floor of a yellow clapboard-sided roominghouse a few blocks from the Union Hotel, a residential street behind the Women's Exchange, whatever that was. A rundown building with peeling boards and hallways painted too many times so that dark, caked-on paint made the corridors cave-like, uninviting. A threadbare carpet on the stairwell, unraveling at the edges. A loose handrailing, the squeak, squeak of old steps. The nervous
yip yip yip
of a dog somewhere in the building. The aroma of burnt onions from a first-floor room.

Peggy bowed us into the small room. Faded floral wallpaper—were those gigantic hollyhocks speckling the walls?—the seams splitting. A shabby wool carpet over rough oak boards. An ancient dresser someone had painted a sad orange. A curtain rustled as a breeze seeped through the old, rickety windowsill. A flophouse destination. I felt sorry for Peggy. Two single beds across from each other in the room, one doubtless belonging to the late Annabel. Sloppily made, covers uneven, both beds covered with knotted chenille spreads. A suitcase resting on the coverlet. A small pine table and two chairs by the window. Peggy spotted me looking at the suitcase on the bed, contents spilling out.

“I been packing some of her belongings,” she pointed out. “Don't know what else to do.” A shrug, helpless.

“No relatives?”

She stared at the suitcase. “Nobody's come forward. The landlord ain't no help.”

“My dear, are we interrupting anything?” From Aleck, not me.

She smiled at him as she jerked her shoulders toward the two chairs. “Sit, I guess.”

Aleck settled his tremendous body into one of the chairs, which creaked and shimmied. Carefully, he balanced himself, then reached into a pocket to extract a cigarette holder. Peggy nodded toward a pack of Lucky Strikes on the table, and he took one, inserted it. Peggy reached for one and lit hers and his. “Miss Ferber?”

I shook my head. “No, thank you.”

“Well,” Aleck said to no one in particular, “I may end up on this sad floor.” The chair groaned.

For some reason Peggy tittered at that and tossed him a quick, approving wave. He beamed at her.

“Were you expecting someone?” I asked disingenuously.

Her eyes watched me closely. “No, why?”

“Well, you seem dressed for an…engagement.”

And she did. A powdered face, a trace of peach rouge on her cheeks, garish bright red lipstick on her full lips. She'd pulled her hair into a precise French twist, graced with an ivory clip. A chubby woman, perhaps in her late thirties or early forties, with a round moon face and round hazel eyes exaggerated by a line of dark kohl, she'd squeezed herself into a dress designed for a smaller—and decidedly younger—woman, a cocktail dress sequined at the bodice, a glittery hemline, the kind I used to spot on the now-departed flappers dancing all-night marathons at Rose Land. Her plump upper arms pushed at the seams, threatened to break free. Dark-complexioned, a hint of the Mediterranean about her, close-cropped bobbed hair, out of fashion.

She stammered, “I'm stepping out later.”

“Well,” I said slowly, “we won't keep you long.”

She perched on the edge of her bed, her knees together, one hand under her other elbow. Nervous, she fidgeted and inhaled the cigarette, blew a circle of smoke over her head. Aleck, watching, waved his cigarette holder, sending his own cloud of smoke into the air. Giddily, he smiled at the woman. When she smiled back, I noticed a smear of lipstick on her front tooth.

I smiled at no one.

“Were you close to Annabel?” I asked.

She answered by looking at Aleck. “No. Well, sort of. I mean, we didn't
know
each other until we had to room together. In this
dump
. Space and all—because of the trial. Everybody charging an arm and a leg for any room they got in this town. The hotel put us together. I mean, we worked together—talked.”

“You liked her?”

“Not at first.” She debated her answer. “She was noisy and interrupted everyone. A little showy. A young woman, you know, happy with herself. But, you know, being in this room with her, I got to know her.”

“She arrived from Chicago, right?”

“Sort of. England, somewhere, I guess.” A little grin. “That irritating accent those people got.” She looked into my face. “What's this all about? I mean, they got the guy, no?”

“I'm trying to satisfy a curiosity,” I told her.

“That makes no sense.”

Aleck chortled. “Indulge the woman, my dear. It's easier to answer her questions than to ignore her. She'll eventually go away.”

I ignored him. “Miss Crispen, I just want to get a clear picture of who Annabel was. After all, she was murdered. She had a life. She should have some justice, no?”

Again, she answered by looking at Aleck. “Well, they got the guy.”

“Cody Lee Thomas,” I stated. “I met him. What did you think of him?”

She took a long time answering, drawing in her cigarette, watching the red glow, and then extinguishing it abruptly in a clamshell ashtray.

“A hick, that one. A rube.”

“Did he come here? To these rooms?”

She swung her head back and forth. “Never. Not allowed. But I seen him at the café. At first he's stopping in to pick her up after her shift, all lovey dovey, cooing at each other, the two of them, but then she tells him to scram, and war breaks out. You heard about the arguments at the café?”

I nodded. “I witnessed one unpleasant skirmish in the parking lot. There was no one around.”

Except for that shadow, I thought. The flash of movement. A person there.

“Well, then you know he was a pest. Mooning like a lovesick boy. Sort of embarrassing.”

“Is that why you didn't like him?”

She giggled. “He's a hick. Simple as that.”

She glanced toward the door. I expected someone to knock. At one point she half-rose, fidgety, then settled back down. Aleck sighed out loud, unpleasant, though Peggy cast a warm glance at him. He smiled back. But when she looked back at me, that look disappeared, replaced by a stern, disapproving expression. A woman obviously taken with the rotund Aleck. And with little patience for the severe spinster hurling untoward questions at her. She waved a finger at him. “You're on the radio. I thought I knew your voice. I listen…”

“My dear,” Aleck bowed, “a fan.”

“But did Cody Lee Thomas kill her?” I interrupted. “Such a murder seems extreme….”

She held up her hand, her voice now a whisper. “She told me that Cody Lee said he'd kill her if she left him.”

My throat went dry. “Well, that doesn't sound like him.”

Aleck shot me a look. “Edna, really. Such romanticism on your part. You don't
know
the man. He's not…”

I bit my lip and addressed Peggy. “She may have been lying to you.”

She clicked her tongue. “Be that as it may, I told the cops what she said.” She pouted. “They was happy to hear my story.”

“Good Lord.”

While Aleck nodded his approval, she went on, her words more forceful now. “I had to. I mean, she says he threatened to kill her, and then I come back here after my shift and she's there”—she pointed to a spot by the door—“and she's lying in a heap, her neck twisted.” A tick in her voice, a swallowed sob.

“Was the room a mess?”

“What do you mean?”

“Things strewn about? Anything taken?”

“Well, she was still wearing her ring, but I know she said it was a real gemstone—like a sapphire—but I can tell paste, honey. Woolworth's bargain bin all the way.” A faraway look came into her eyes. She stood and walked over to Annabel's dresser. She swung back, puzzled. “Annabel was always reading these letters she saved.”

“Letters?”

“Yeah, a stack of them.”

“And?” Echoes of Cody Lee mentioning letters…but what did that mean?

“They ain't here now.”

My pulse quickened. “Someone took them?”

“Who knows? Maybe not. Maybe she put them back in the drawer.” She pulled open a top drawer. “She always kept them here.” She drew her lips into a thin line. “Nope. Gone.” For a second her eyes flitted around the room, nervous. She bit the corner of a polished nail.

I looked at Aleck. “What does this mean?”

He arched his hands. “Obviously, the murderer took them, Edna.”

“I know that,” I said, irritated. “But what does it
mean
?”

“You're assuming a lot, Edna. This could mean nothing.”

“Or something. There was no reason for Cody Lee to take them.”

Aleck addressed Peggy. “Were they about him?”

She moved to the window and looked down into the street. “I don't like this talk. All of this.” Her eyes got cloudy. “I think someone was following her. I mean, one time she said she felt there was always someone in the shadows, watching.”

“Cody Lee?” From Aleck.

She shook her head and sank into a chair. “Naw. Leastwise I don't think so. She said she felt it when they were together sometimes. Like a shadow nearby that moved away when she got near.” She shivered. “I told her it was a ghost.” She looked down at her hands. “I'm not liking any of this. I'm getting spooked.” Her voice shaking, she looked down into her lap, but, in an unguarded moment, twisted her head to the side. “I really have to go out…”

“Looks to me like you are ready,” I said.

She didn't like that. “I like my privacy.”

A figure in the shadows. The one I saw—that cold morning when I overheard the spat in the parking lot. A shadow? A lurker? Someone waiting to kill her. To take some letters? What did all this mean?

I shifted the direction of the conversation. “Did she like the job at the hotel?”

“She liked the money, but she said she was gonna quit in a bit.”

“Why?”

A sliver of a smile. “Oh, the old gravy train coming in.”

“Meaning?” From Aleck.

“She came here because someone was gonna give her big money.”

“But who?”

She wasn't listening. “And she told me I'd get some of it. If I helped her out.”