Cold Morning by Ed Ifkovic Page B

your apartment, some witchery chant coming from your gramophone, a shawl draped over your shoulders, a crystal ball before you, as you commune with spirits.”
    â€œWhat is your point, Aleck?”
    â€œI received the strangest note this afternoon. A woman from Hopewell—or at least a farm near Hopewell, but a mile or so from the Lindbergh mansion—she informs me she heard noises the night Little Lindy was kidnapped.” He lowered his voice. “She reads cards, she wrote, and a message received said…”
    â€œFor God’s sake, Aleck.”
    â€œBut she insists she heard German spoken in a grove of trees.”
    â€œAnd she never told the police this before because…what? She forgot?”
    He grunted. “She’s visiting her daughter in nearby Raritan. We have an invitation.”
    â€œ You have an invitation. Have fun.”
    He scrunched up his face. “You must come with me, dear Ferb. Old ladies give me the willies, present company often included.”
    â€œAleck.”
    â€œI insist.”
    â€œBeing imperious is not a good role for you, Aleck. You lack the appropriate gold crown slipping down your forehead.”
    He burst out laughing. “Proud of yourself, aren’t you?”
    Aleck insisted we commandeer the town car and dine at the Hawthorne Inn on the outskirts of the township where we’d meet the woman. “I hear great things about the restaurant.”
    â€œI don’t think the Times planned on our scooting around the countryside sampling the local cuisine.”
    â€œLocal color, dear Ferb. Trials are deadly—at least most of them. I need to spice up my running commentary.” A long pause. “Although my column on Anne Lindbergh’s grace will move most to tears.”
    â€œIt’ll move you to tears, Aleck.”
    â€œI do sob at my own gripping prose.”
    Old Willie was our driver, although he grunted when he was roused from his rooms at Mrs. Olsen’s Rooming House. Yet, once behind the wheel as he was tooling out of town into the countryside, he chatted endlessly about the crowds of people streaming into Flemington—the enormous traffic jams as cars inched along. “Save time just to hang the bastard,” he concluded.
    â€œYou don’t believe in a fair trial?” I asked.
    â€œNot when everybody knows what’s what.”
    Aleck was amused. “And what is that?”
    â€œThe murder of a baby boy.”
    â€œTell me, Willie,” I started, “did you read about the murder of the waitress at the Union Hotel Café?”
    â€œYep. Heard all about it. It was in the Democrat .”
    â€œ Barely in the Democrat ,” I snarled.
    Willie glanced at me through the rearview mirror. “Your point, ma’am?”
    â€œAnnabel Biggs. A woman murdered.” My words sharp, hot.
    Aleck frowned. “By her boyfriend, I gather.”
    A long pause as Willie chewed the side of his face. “You know, his ma says he wasn’t the one that done it.”
    I sat up. I touched the back of the driver’s seat. “You know him?”
    The car slowed. “Not him , really. Sort of a big lout, keeps to himself. Folks say he’s as dumb as a bucket of rocks. But his mother…she works as a housekeeper on a farm nearby, owner a friend of my brother who lives in Somerset.”
    â€œWhat did she say? Tell me.”
    He watched me through the rearview mirror. “Well, nothing to me. But my brother tells me his ma was crying and blubbering all last night, says her boy—he’s like an overgrown child, that one, and slower than a slug on the mossy side of a tree—he was with her that night.”
    The news troubled me. “His mother said that? And the police don’t believe her?”
    A dry chuckle. “What do you think?”
    â€œDid you ever meet Annabel Biggs, Willie?”
    â€œNaw. No reason to.”
    Aleck was regarding me