Frana’s embroidery. Frana, adroit with a needle, often decorated her bonnets and dresses with ribbons. Sometimes she wore them in her hair. She favored blue and gold. I once cruelly remarked to Esther that Frana was readying herself to be the Hester Prynne of Appleton.
He turned to me. “Could this be Frana’s?”
“It is hers.” I was emphatic.
“How do you know?”
“I know.” Behind me, Esther nodded.
“So now we know where Frana was hiding,” Caleb Stone concluded.
Rumbling in the hallway, everyone talking at once.
The principal spoke in a tinny, hesitant voice. “But how could she get inside? She had no key. Why would she even think to do so?” He looked flustered. “The door was locked. You’d have to have a key.”
Everyone turned to look at the quiet German. August Schmidt had been trying to follow the events, his head swiveling back and forth. baffled by most of it; but his gaze had become more and more agitated as time passed.
In German, Caleb Stone asked August Schmidt who else had access to a key. Schmidt mumbled something incoherent but suggested the only key he knew of was in his storeroom and never left the wall.
Amos Moss bellowed, “No way Frana Lempke couldn’t have had no key.” He turned to the janitor. “August Schmidt, did you grab Frana Lempke and drag her here?”
The man squirmed. “Frana Lempke?”
Caleb Stone asked him, “Did you know her?”
The man nodded. “
Amos Moss was beside himself. “Somebody let that girl in this here room.”
Schmidt clearly did not understand what was happening, except that every eye was on him, accusing. He started to blubber, and for some reason reached for the jangling key, still in the lock, and the deputy put out his hand, stopping him. Schmidt started to cry inconsolably, twisting his body as though looking for escape; and he whispered a torrent of rambling German. What I gleaned, in bits and pieces:
“But,” I remarked, “Frana had that fake note. She planned to sneak out at two. She
“Please, Miss Ferber,” Caleb interrupted. “Not now.”
Staring at the whimpering man, lost in the tense hallway, I knew in my heart of hearts that August Schmidt had nothing to do with Frana’s murder.
Not so with Amos Moss, who boomed out, “Clear to me this here man lay in wait and he abducted her, the pretty young girl he probably watched every day, seen his chance, she alone in the hallway, maybe she
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
