Snapshot

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Snapshot

A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery

Linda Barnes

Para mi hermana, Carol

I dreamed that one had died in a strange place

Near no accustomed hand;

And they had nailed the boards above her face,

The peasants of that land,

Wondering to lay her in that solitude,

And raised above her mound

A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,

And planted cypress round;

And left her to the indifferent stars above

Until I carved these words:

She was more beautiful than thy first love
,

But now lies under boards
.

—“A Dream of Death”

William Butler Yeats, 1891

What goes out of your eyes also gradually leaves your heart.

—Persian saying

1

Every April my mother used to host her own version of the traditional Passover seder. A mishmash of Hebrew, Yiddish, English, and Russian, it involved all Mom's old union pals—Jews, Christians, Muslims, and pagans—who'd give rapid-fire thanks for the release of the ancient Hebrews from Egyptian bondage, and then launch into pre-chicken-soup tirades against General Motors, J. Edgar Hoover, and the FBI. I grew up thinking they were part of the religion.

I liked the Passover songs best. One of my favorites, “Dayenu,” a lively, repetitive reminder that “It would have been enough” had God brought us out of Egypt but not given us the Torah, and “It would have been enough” had God given us the Torah but not given us the land of Israel, must have had about twenty-seven verses. Sung after the ritual consumption of four glasses of wine, sometimes it had forty-three.

Dayenu
, I found myself thinking when the whole mess was over. It would have been enough to get the snapshots in the mail.

The first snapshot came on March 20, camouflaged by a sheaf of “urgent” political messages, market circulars, coupon giveaways, and appeals from various charities about to go belly-up unless I forked over twenty-five bucks. My cat and I have an arrangement that allows me to throw most of my mail directly into the wastebasket. It is he, T.C., Thomas C. Carlyle, aka Tom Cat, who subscribes to
Mother Jones
and
The New York Times Book Review
. It is he who fearlessly lists his full name in the phone directory, warding off the heavy-breathers that mere initials invite. When I scoop the mail off the foyer floor, I sort it into two piles, one for me, one for the cat. His stack is always twice as high as mine, but I hold my jealousy in check.

T.C. gets nothing but junk. I used to read it; I know.

Not that the mail with my name on it is such hot stuff. Most of it might as well be addressed to Occupant.

But on March 20 the mail included one hand-addressed envelope, which I suspiciously examined for the telltale return address of a famous person. Some marketing gurus out there genuinely believe I'll rip open a flap just to see what my old buddy Ed McMahon wants to tell me.

My tongue made an abrupt clicking noise, an involuntary response to the lack of a return address on the blue envelope—a shockingly misplaced statement of faith in the U.S. Postal Service as far as I was concerned.

Red Emma, my inherited parakeet, thinking I'd addressed her, began a stream of “pretty birds” and similar pap.

“Stick your head in a water dish,” I suggested. I've been trying to rid myself of that bird ever since my aunt Bea died. Or at least teach it to swear.

The envelope was party-invitation size, a bit larger than three by five. Not dime-store stuff either; it had the feel of stationery from a fancy box instead of a banded pack. I allowed myself a brief moment of speculation before slitting the top fold. I don't know a lot of people who issue formal party invitations.

I might as well not have bothered to dredge up the few sociable names. Inside was no invitation, no letter, no card, just a color snapshot of a baby, an anonymous wrinkled raisin of a face swathed in a multicolored pastel thing the name of which I'd forgotten. My aunt used to knit them for the expected grandchildren of her mah-jongg ladies. They—the outfits, not the ladies—looked like little bags with zippers down the front and tiny hoods. I flipped the photo over, expecting some kind of birth announcement.

Just
KODAK QUALITY PAPER
repeated on a series of slanted lines from the upper-left-hand corner to the lower right.

A guessing game: Name that baby. On my desk I keep a magnifying glass, pencils, pens, scissors, and rubber bands in a coffee can. I polished the lens with spit and Kleenex. Under closer scrutiny, the baby's face looked like a wrinkled prune. Turning my attention to the envelope—specifically, to the postmark: Winchester, Massachusetts—I flipped through a mental Rolodex.

I don't know a soul in Winchester.

I slipped the photo under a corner of the blotter and proceeded with the bills. I study the phone statement like a hawk ever since Roz, my third-floor tenant, housecleaner, and sometime assistant, had a late-night vision and dialed a chatty Tibetan monk at my expense.

Exactly one week later, the second photo arrived. The envelope was the same sky-blue. No return address. Postmark: Winchester.

I'm no baby expert, nor do I wish to become one, but I pegged this tot for about a year old. Fair hair, light complexion, with wind-whipped crimson circles of excitement on her cheeks. I say “her” because the baby was wearing a frilly pink dress and tiny black patent Mary Janes so glossy they'd probably never touched the ground. The occasion could have been a first birthday party, although no cake was in evidence.

Nothing, as a matter of fact, was in evidence, just green grass and a couple of leafy elms.

I located last week's photo and got out my trusty magnifying lens. Could have been the same baby, a year older. Could have been another kid altogether.

I was in no mood for games and thought about tossing the snaps in the trash along with T.C.'s Sharper Image catalog and his invitation to use a $6,000 line of credit with Citibank MasterCard.

But I didn't.

The third came on April 3, one week later, right on schedule. I almost expected it. The little girl was wearing bibbed pink overalls and a matching pink-and-white-striped shirt. Same girl as in the second photo; I could see that now. She'd changed, maybe aged another year, but the eyes were the same shape, the mouth had the identical bow.

Same amount of information, too. Zero. I thought about missing kid cases, wondered whether I'd seen the girl on the back of a milk carton.

It was the briefest of thoughts. I shoved the three photos underneath the blotter. I guess I don't feel right about tossing photographs. I keep them around, the way I save leftovers in the refrigerator.

The fourth photo arrived on the tenth of April. My Winchester correspondent had the U.S. mail figured better than I did. When I drop something in the blue box, sometimes it gets delivered the next day. Then I mail a letter from the same place and it takes a full week to make it to the same destination.

Number five, when it appeared, was definitely a birthday photo. A cone-shaped hat was tilted to one side of the girl's head, secured by an elastic band under her chin. Was I going to get a new picture of this child every Friday for the rest of my life?

Kid was a heartbreaker, no doubt about it. It wasn't any one of the features; it wasn't the features at all. The eyes were too close together, the nose small and unformed. It was the grin, a light-up-the-eyes squint that could have melted polar ice caps. Maybe somebody was sending them to cheer me up at the end of each week.

Probably not.

They stayed on my mind, like a measure of half-forgotten music, a melody tantalizingly out of reach. Almost a week later, on Thursday, I spread the photos across my desk and went over the lot with the magnifying lens, speculating about relatives. My mother had no family, except for Aunt Bea, and she was dead. Aunt Bea had never married. I'd lost touch with my father's kin even before his death. He'd never had much use for them. Was some long-lost cousin trying to slowly acquaint me with his or her offspring? Was this the opening salvo of a charity touch?

I do have a little sister, not a blood relation, but a sister from the Big Sisters Organization. Because of a sticky situation with her mom, I haven't seen Paolina for over four months. Could the Big Sisters be trying to soften me up to accept a replacement child?

Forget it.

I put away the magnifying glass with a sigh, sarcastically congratulating myself on some truly momentous discoveries: The child's face had thinned out as she'd turned from baby to toddler to little girl. Her hair had grown. The anonymous photographer had managed well-composed, centered shots with no chairs or lamps growing out of the kid's head.

Brilliant detective work. With the photos laid out like a hand of solitaire, I could watch little raisin-face begin her transformation into a curly-haired, blue-eyed, blond American princess.

Paolina, my little sister, is Colombian, with chocolate eyes and shiny dark hair. Her face is too round for perfection, and will probably stay that way even after her cheeks lose their baby-fat chubbiness.

So who wants perfection?

I gathered the snapshots together like a pack of cards and aimed them at the wastebasket's gaping mouth. At the last minute, I held the shot. Not that I figured they'd lead anywhere, but I found myself more intrigued than irritated by their presence.

After that night, I no longer thought about tossing them. I don't trust anything to the trash.

Not since the attack of the garbage thief.

2

Yes. The garbage thief.

I know it's hard to credit. If I hadn't been leaning out the window, I wouldn't have seen it. If I hadn't seen it—if, say, Roz had reported it to me the next morning—I wouldn't have believed it. And if I'd been wearing any clothes, I'd have stopped it.