Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [100]
Jeannie thought things over during the night, when she would customarily make one trip downstairs to check for the rolling sound, which seemed to be happening sometimes, but sometimes not. After too many sleepless nights, she finally opened her copy of the Blue Book and discovered the phone number for Hortense Underwood, who was not listed in the regular telephone directory. When she said she needed to talk, Hortense promptly invited her to come for a visit to Edgevale Road with Ivan.
“I’ll come when he’s in school,” Jeannie said. She was trying to help him forget what had happened in his room, not engrain it any further on his troubled mind. “I do have one favor to ask, if it isn’t too much trouble. Do you still have photo albums and school yearbooks, anything with pictures of the Erdmanns? I’m interested in Martin Erdmann, in particular.”
There was a long pause. “Martin was a few classes ahead of me at school, but there’s a chance. I’ll see what I can find for you.”
Over strong cups of Eddie’s Breakfast Blend served in bone-thin Limoge cups, Jeannie and Hortense examined an ancient, falling-apart literary anthology of student work. There was no yearbook per se, but mixed in with childish poetry were a few cloudy black-and-white photographs of boys and girls lined up on a step, wearing sailor suits.
“This is my class,” Hortense said, pointing to a small girl with braids, who looked into the camera with a slightly accusatory gaze. “And yours truly. The girl on the far end is Agatha Erdmann.”
“You said Martin was a few years older?” Jeannie stared at Agatha, as if her appearance might spark some recognition.
“Yes. I thought there might be photos of him here, but … he must have already died. It was very sad.” Hortense shook her head.
“What did he look like? Can you remember?”
“Red hair, freckles, skinny. Oh, and I guess the thing I remember is how the Erdmanns dressed. They were always dressed like diplomatic children, even at a neighborhood public school.”
“Do you mean in fancy clothes?” Jeannie pictured a Fauntleroy suit, the kind of costume Charlie had suggested Ivanhoe wear for the family portrait.
“No, I mean a sailor suit, like Agatha’s wearing in the photograph. The children always wore sailor suits, had to wear them well into their teens, much to their chagrin.”
A sailor suit. What Ivan had talked about—a boy with a bib—sounded like it could have been a boy wearing a sailor suit. A chill settled over Jeannie, and she told Hortense she hadn’t realized how time had flown, that it was time to get Ivanhoe from St. David’s and take him home for lunch. Lunch, followed by a pre-nap story, which, for that afternoon, she chose Babar, the Elephant Emperor whose children all wore sailor suits. And as Jeannie had expected, when Ivan saw the illustration of Pom, Flora, and Alexander, he squealed and pointed, “That one like boy at night-night time!”
Jeannie had no more questions.
That night, she told Charlie she’d be waiting for him in the bedroom after he put Ivanhoe to sleep. Charlie did the bedtime routine in record time—thirty-five minutes—and was halfway undressed by the time he got in the room.
“So, you must be feeling better today,” he said happily, grabbing her around her hips and pressing her tightly against him. “What did you do, get some advice on how to relax from that wonderful woman of a certain age?”
“Actually, Charlie, I brought up some of the whiskey.” She removed his hands from her body, then pointed to the cut-glass decanter she’d set on the table by the window. “I think we could both use a drink, because there’s something serious I have to discuss.”
She told him everything. About the sailor suit, the bowling sounds, the long gone household of German-American children shunned by the neighborhood.