Girl Waits with Gun (28 page)

Sheriff Heath arrived just as we were getting ready to leave. “I wish you'd let me drive you,” he said. Norma just grunted and pushed past him to harness Dolley.

“We're afraid of what Francis might think,” Fleurette said.

“We are not afraid of Francis,” I said. “We'll be fine. The crooks don't come out until tonight, right?”

The sheriff watched as Fleurette went to join Norma in the barn. She wore a stylish dress of reseda-green silk, gathered a little more tightly at the waist than I would have allowed had I any idea what she'd been working on.

“That girl has grown up in the time I've known her,” he said.

I sighed and shook my head. “And I'm afraid the kidnapping threats have only gone to her head. She thinks she's quite the desirable little prize. I don't know what we're going to do with her.”

“Keep her on the farm as long as you can,” he said.

“I don't know how much longer that will be. But for today—”

“Today you should ride alongside her and keep an eye on the road. Pull down the storm curtains so no one can see you. Are you taking your revolver?”

“I am. But you don't think I'll need it?”

“I hope not.”

Norma and Fleurette rode around front in the carriage. Dolley stamped at the ice and great clouds of steam came from her nostrils. I climbed up and squeezed in next to Fleurette.

“I'll drive past your brother's house a few times later today,” the sheriff shouted as we turned to ride away.

I nodded and watched as he strode to the barn, a small figure in a gray and empty landscape.

FRANCIS AND BESSIE
lived in a neighborhood of modest but thoroughly modern bungalows in Hawthorne. The homes were snugly built and outfitted with good plumbing and gas and new electrical wires. Each home sat next to a driveway and a garage built more for automobiles than carriages, although as we drove down the street, I saw that a few people still kept a horse stabled.

They were the first to occupy their home. After they moved in, the smell of sawdust and varnish hung about them for months. At Bessie's urging, Francis painted the house a cheerful cornflower blue and installed window boxes that sported primroses or geraniums, depending on the season. Every room blazed with electric lamps, even the children's room, and all the furniture came from Rafner's on Grand Street. Mother had been shocked to walk into their house for the first time and see that they had purchased a complete living room set, exactly as advertised in the newspaper. She'd been even more shocked when Norma pointed out that it had been listed for $195, with a charge account that offered a year to pay.

They purchased the walnut dining room set as well, which came with a china cabinet, a velvet seamless rug, and a buffet mirror. “I suppose I don't have to go down the hall to see that you bought the bedroom outfit, too,” Mother had sniffed, “when we have a farmhouse full of furniture you could have taken.”

But Francis and Bessie didn't want the furniture from the farmhouse, and for that I couldn't blame them. Their house was entirely new and, as Francis liked to say, “free of defects,” by which he meant that it was free of gas leaks and drafts and the dark, hulking cabinets and monstrous carved chairs that represented our mother's Austrian girlhood. Theirs was an American house, a house of the twentieth century, and her old things had no place there.

Francis met us outside, unhitched Dolley, and walked her around back where she could get some water. The three of us stood on the front lawn, feeling too uncivilized to go inside. Had we really been sleeping with revolvers at our bedsides and shooting at strange men in the dark? Were we really in so much danger that the sheriff himself had to follow us around? It didn't seem like we belonged in Francis's cheerful cottage, this tidy place giving off warmth and light and the rich fragrance of Thanksgiving dinner.

The children spotted us and ran outside. The boy—whom we called Frankie to distinguish him from his father, Francis, and his grandfather, Frank—ran straight into Norma and almost knocked her over. The two of them shared a love of animals understood by no one else in the family. He led her indoors to ask her opinion about a nest of baby mice he'd uncovered in the garden. Lorraine, the older of the two, wore a dress she'd helped her mother make, and she and Fleurette fell into a conversation about collars and hemlines.

That left me on the porch by myself, taking a deep breath before I followed them inside and subjected myself to my brother's harangue.

Fortunately, it was Bessie who got to me first. She ran to me before I'd even closed the door and reached up to wrap her arms around my neck. We'd always had an unexpected sort of kinship. She was kind and infinitely patient with my brother, and she ran a good household and raised two well-behaved children. For that I admired her even if I didn't want to live the same kind of life she did. And in turn, for reasons I couldn't fathom, she treated me as if I led an adventurous and exciting life out in Wyckoff, worthy of envy and approbation.

“I'm glad to see you in one piece,” she said, almost in a whisper. “You gave us both a terrible scare. We didn't tell the children.”

“Of course not,” I said. “I'm sorry that you had to read it in the paper. That was thoughtless of us.”

She stood back and smiled up at me, gripping my arms by the shoulders, and then leaned in again. “I've forbidden any talk of the newspapers in this house until after dinner.”

Then she turned to lead me to the kitchen, adding in a low voice, “I only wish I could've taken a revolver and stood out there with you on Saturday night.”

I laughed, imagining Bessie with a hand mixer in one hand and a gun in the other. “Come with me next time.”

Bessie was rolling out dough on the drain board for another of what Francis called her “illustrious pies.” For the next hour we worked side by side, talking of little other than the children and the weather and Bessie's volunteer work at the library. I marveled at how good it felt to be in a warm, well-appointed kitchen, enjoying such easygoing company. Maybe my life had been too rough lately. I was more relaxed in that kitchen than I had been in months.

“If you enjoy this so much, Constance, you can take over the cooking at Christmas,” she said, grinning at me. “But you'll have to wait until next year. We're going to my aunt's in Boston this year. Why don't you all come with us?”

“It's too hard to leave the farm in the winter,” I said. “We'll be fine on our own.”

We ate our dinner in peace, with Bessie, Fleurette, and the children keeping up most of the conversation while Francis carved the birds and I passed the platters. It was a traditional Kopp family meal. Mother never did develop a taste for turkey, preferring a roasted goose or duck at the holidays. In keeping with her tradition, Bessie found a fine, fat duck and roasted a chicken as well. There were green beans and corn that she had canned last summer, pickled onions, and dinner rolls that exhaled steam when we broke them apart. The rolls were made according to a recipe of Mother's that no one other than Bessie had ever mastered. Little chips of butter, as cold as ice, had to be cut into the dough at the last possible minute, and no one else seemed to have a knack for it.

After dinner Norma and Fleurette stood to clear the table, and Francis and I stepped out on the back porch, where we could see Dolley nibbling at patches of thawed grass in the lawn. She pawed at the ground and slapped her tail around the way a person might hop up and down to keep warm.

Francis closed the door behind us and said, “I wasn't expecting to read about my sisters in the paper.”

“Which paper?”

“There was more than one?” He groaned, his breath like smoke in the air.

“We made the news in New York and Philadelphia.”

“No,” he said sharply. “I didn't know about that.”

For a minute we stood side by side in silence and let the sounds from inside the house settle in around us—the rattle of china and silver, the rush of water into a pan, the children's footsteps through every room. Francis lit his pipe and the sweet tobacco smoke drifted over to me.

I wasn't about to apologize or offer up any sort of explanation. I waited for him to say his piece.

“I didn't know you had armed men guarding the house. Most of those things in the paper—you never told me about any of that.”

“I know. I should have. But what would you have done? Bring us all here to live? What if Kaufman and his gang had followed us over here?”

He leaned on his porch railing. “Well, I should have done more. You're my responsibility.”

“We are responsible for ourselves.”

“And look at what a fine job you've done. What if those men at the creek had shot Fleurette?”

“But they didn't.”

The door opened behind us. It was little Lorraine, sent by Bessie to ask us if we wanted coffee. We told her yes.

When she was gone, he said, “I knew it was a bad idea to leave you girls out there by yourselves. It's time to sell the farm.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean? Mother meant it for us!”

“But you girls won't last out there much longer,” he said. “I've been down to the bank and had a look at your account.”

“You did what?” I shouted.

“Shhhhh,” he said. “Listen to me. You can't keep selling off plots of land to pay the bills. What are you going to do? Mother didn't leave enough to support three girls for the rest of their lives. Within a year you're going to need some other income. And unless one of you has a husband in the wings I'm not aware of . . .”

“A husband? Now you're trying to pawn us off on a husband?”

He laughed. “I've never heard marriage described that way.”

I leaned back and looked out into the approaching darkness. “Can't this wait? They're about to arrest him, and then we can put all this behind us. We'll sit down and figure something out.”

Francis tilted his head and looked over at me, considering it. “All right. After Christmas. But no later than spring. That's a good time to sell a farm. It's the best thing for you. You'll see.”

We sat together in uneasy silence. I heard the rattle of an automobile in the street and wondered if it was the sheriff. I didn't dare lean around the porch to look.

ARREST IN BLACK HAND LETTERS CASE

Harry Kaufman, Silk Dyer, of Paterson,

Indicted By Federal Grand Jury

for Threatening the

Misses Constance and Florette Kopp, of Wyckoff.

D
EC
. 3—H
ARRY
K
AUFMAN
, conducting a silk dyeing establishment in Paterson, is under arrest on a Federal indictment found in Newark, charging him with improper use of the mails. He was released subject to bail posted by his sister, Mrs. Marion Garfinkel of Pittsburgh.

Detective Francis A. Butler, who investigated the case upon receiving the sensational story of Miss Constance Kopp, of Wyckoff, made the arrest, and the indictment was the outcome of his inquiry.

The
Evening Record
last week told of the lively experiences of the Misses Kopp, all of which followed their encounter with Kaufman in Paterson nearly six months ago, when his auto crashed into their buggy. Kaufman refused to pay $50 for the damage done, and the suit was instituted.

Constance Kopp says anonymous letters began to arrive, threatening all sorts of disaster if they continued the suit against Kaufman. Armed men began to prowl around the house after dark, and shots were fired to terrorize the family and even at members of the family.

County Detectives Blauvelt and Courter, Prosecutor Wright, Assistant Prosecutor Zabriskie, Judge Seufert, and the Franklin Township Committee have all been working on this unusual case and the trial will no doubt prove particularly interesting.

Sheriff Heath has provided an armed guard at the Kopp home for some time past.

“WHO ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE?”
I asked, setting down the newspaper and looking up at Sheriff Heath, who stood beaming at me along with Deputy Morris and Deputy English. Fleurette and Norma sat next to me on the divan, reading over my shoulder. Norma reached out with her scissors for the headline, but I batted her hand away. “Detective Blauvelt and Prosecutor Zabriskie and Detective Butler? I've never seen any of those men in my life. And since when has the Franklin Township Committee been involved? I thought they went after horse thieves.”

Sheriff Heath grinned and pulled up a chair. “I believe you just learned an important lesson about law enforcement in Bergen County. My men do the hard work of chasing after thieves and shooting at intruders in the middle of the night. Then, as soon as a reporter turns up with a pencil and a notepad, the detectives and prosecutors leap from their desks long enough to make the arrest, serve the indictment, and make sure the papers spell their names right. That's their job, as they see it. We pay no attention to it and go about our business.”

“That's no way to win reelection,” Norma said. “It's no wonder you're so unpopular in the papers. All anyone ever hears are your complaints about prison conditions.”

Sheriff Heath was in high spirits and couldn't be bothered by Norma's opinions. “I speak up for the people under my care,” he said. “It's my duty. The voters in Bergen County can make their decision based on my actions, not the words of reporter who can't spell the name of either the criminal or his victim.”

“I'd vote for you,” Fleurette said.

He nodded and rose to leave. “You ladies might just get your chance.”