The Girl Is Murder Read Free Page A

certainly didn’t have the strength to go to the cafeteria with nothing to eat and no one to sit with. Instead, I retreated to a girls’ bathroom stall and waited out the hour.
     
    THE AFTERNOON was more of the same, just one embarrassment after another. I longed for a friendly face to make it all go away, but Suze never reappeared. Tom did, though. Just as I left my last class of the day, I saw him in handcuffs, being led out of school by two police officers.
    What on earth was going on?
    A boy with a camera dangling around his neck stopped to watch the action. As Tom was guided into a squad car, the boy took a photo. That task complete, he produced a notepad and pencil and jotted something down.
    “What’s happening?” I asked him.
    “They arrested Tom Barney for the locker thefts.”
    “Why?”
    He half snorted, half laughed. “Because he confessed. I knew it had to be one of the Rainbows, I just didn’t know which one.”
    My heart broke: not only had I been robbed, but one of the only two people who’d been nice to me that day was the thief.

CHAPTER
     
    2
     
    WHEN I RETURNED HOME to the Orchard Street house, Pop had a client. There was an unspoken rule that I was to remain scarce when he was in the middle of business. In fact, I think he preferred it if I was scarce even if he wasn’t. But I wanted to plop down near the radio and listen to Kitty Foyle to take my mind off the day. So I took a risk and stayed in the parlor, keeping the Philco’s volume down low so I wouldn’t clue Pop to my presence. Mama’s picture had been returned to its usual place, but the glass was broken out of it and a scratch had pierced the photograph, stabbing the still image somewhere near her heart.
    I closed my eyes and let the tales of scrappy Kitty trying to move up in the world soothe me. For fifteen minutes I was somewhere else, caught between Kitty’s world and my own the year prior. When I came home from a bad day back then—and let’s face it, they had been few and far between—Mama would sit beside me and run her fingers through my hair, telling me that everything was going to be all right, peppering her English with German. “Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei,” she would say, trying to make me smile. “Everything has an end, except sausages, which have two.” Sometimes it annoyed me, but more often than not I was lulled by her calm reassurance. It would be all right. Everything did have an end, even my minor calamities. I would be fine, just like she was. Anything I was going through she had already endured.
    In fact, she’d survived much more than me. Mama was a German immigrant. She’d already made it through one war.
    Maybe that was why she had killed herself—perhaps she couldn’t stand the thought of going through a second one.
    I closed my eyes and tried to picture her there beside me. What would she say if she was here? It will get better, Iris. You mustn’t be afraid to stand on your own. She wasn’t. There was nothing Mama wasn’t willing to do by herself. I’m sure part of that came from Pop being absent for months at a time, but some of it must’ve been because she was German. When everyone is looking at you with suspicion because of where you came from, you couldn’t depend on them to help you.
    It was working. I was calming down … until snippets of conversation taking place in Pop’s office forced their way into the room.
    “I would like my money back,” said a voice I didn’t recognize.
    “All I need is another week. You have to understand, you can’t force things. The opportunity has to be right,” said Pop.
    “You’ve had plenty of time. She’s going somewhere every night. For all your dillydallying, I could’ve taken my own pictures by now and been done with it.”
    “You’re right,” said Pop. “Of course you’re right.” I left my spot by the radio and approached the door. It was closed, but there was a vent near the bottom to help the radiator heat