LITMIR.BIZ

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you’ll still be my princess. I shouldn’t have dragged you out of class. I’ve been doing a lot of impulsive things lately … lately time, it turned out nice.”

      “I love you, Daddy.”

      “I love you, too, Cynthia. Go back.”

      “Are you sure—”

      “I’m fine, honey. Go back to class.”

      He watched her leave. Dear God, he thought. It was hard to let go.

      “For a photographer, he sure didn’t have many personal snapshots,” Marge said to Decker as they finished combing Pode’s bedroom. “No baby or graduation pictures of Dustin, no hidden pictures of his wife. You’d think a widower would have one honored picture of his dead wife.”

      “Maybe he wasn’t a sentimentalist,” Decker said, closing the last bureau drawer.

      “But it’s weird.” Marge scanned the room then said, “Look at the walls. Those square white patches. Pete, there were pictures hanging up there.”

      “So someone cleared them away. Maybe they were valuable. Besides, we’re not interested in family photos, and I don’t think Pode hung his porn on his bedroom walls.”

      Marge thought about that and said nothing. She sat down on an empty double bed. “We’ve been through this place twice and haven’t come up with anything,” she said. “Want to move on to the studio?”

      “Yeah,” Decker said, resigning himself to finding nothing.

      “Hungry, Pete?”

      “A little. We’ll stop by McDonalds on the way over.”

      “Hey, I know you by now, Rabbi. I brought my lunch. Just stop by a 7-Eleven and let me pick up something to drink.”

      “I didn’t bring my lunch, Marge,” he said quickly. “Let’s pick me up a Big Mac.”

      She gave him a funny look.

      “You’ve been bringing kosher lunches for the last four months and now it’s McDonalds?”

      “I don’t want to talk about it, Marge,” he said brusquely. “Let’s just do the job so we can go home.”

      The back room of Pode’s studio was a mess—cramped and packed with props. In the center was a professional camera perched atop a tripod. On the north side was the sitting area—a bench, a few chairs, and boxes of photographic accoutrements. Strewn on the floor were parasols, fake flower bouquets, neckties, jackets, false collars, and yards of velvet. The dressing stalls were open, the curtains crumpled heaps on the floor. He didn’t see any file cabinet. Not here, not at the house.

      “Either someone tossed the place or Cecil was an unbelievable slob,” Decker said.

      “Move the tripod over to the side,” Marge said as she began kicking junk into a corner. “We need a little elbow room.”

      Decker hefted the tripod, folded the legs, then leaned the apparatus against the wall. He turned around and walked across the room. He pivoted and retraced his steps. Did it a third time.

      “Getting some exercise?” Marge asked, bemused. She knew he was up to something.

      Decker stood at the room’s center and bounced on the balls of his feet. The flooring underneath was springy. He bent down and felt the linoleum tiles.

      “We’ve got a trapdoor here,” he said. “Get me something to pry it open with.”

      After a minute of searching Marge found a screwdriver.

      “This isn’t heavy enough,” Decker complained. “I can’t get any leverage. The damn thing’s not budging.”

      “Maybe it’s locked,” Marge said.

      “I knew there was a reason for having you here.”

      Marge slugged him. Hard.

      “Spring lock,” he said. “Where the hell is the release button?”

      Marge searched the walls. Nothing except light switches, and that wouldn’t make sense. Accidentally flip the wrong switch and up flies the tripod. But she tried all of them anyway. Nothing.

      “Try the ceiling fan,” she suggested.

      Decker pulled the cord. The fan turned on. Another pull, the fan turned off.

      “Leave it on,” Marge said. “Get some air in the place.”

      He tugged on the cord and walked inside the dressing rooms. The walls were bare.

      “We could saw the door open,” he suggested.

      “Where’s your spirit of detection?” she said.

      “I’m tired.”

      “Let’s be logical,” she said. “If that’s Pode’s hiding place, he’d have to be able to get into it quickly. It wouldn’t make sense to move the camera, run out to the waiting room, push a button and run back into this room. His enemies would get him by then. The button has to be close by. It also has to be wired through the floor and maybe through the wall and ceiling. So the button has to be on the floor, wall, or ceiling. We’ve scoured the walls and ceiling. That leaves us to crawl around on our hands and knees, big fellah.”

      The button was under a loose corner tile. Marge pressed it and the trap door sprung open. The area underneath was pitch black.

      “Got a flashlight?” he asked.

      “Wait a sec. I’ll get one from the trunk.”

      Decker stuck his hand inside the dark hole. He shouted hello, and from the sound of the echo, knew the space was deep. Marge came back a minute later, bent down next to him and shined the light into the darkness.

      “How the hell do we get down there?” she wondered out loud. “I don’t see any sort of ladder.”

      “How many feet to the bottom?” Decker asked, squinting over the edge, trying to make out the dimensions.

      “It looks too deep to jump,” Marge said. “Wonder how he got down here.”

      Decker stuck his head in the hole and felt under the edge. “There are hooks screwed in here. Bet he had a rope ladder and it latched onto the hardware. Get the rope out of the trunk of the car.”

      “Now you’re Tarzan?”

      “Got any better ideas?”

      “I’ll fetch the rope,” she said, laughing.

      She returned and handed him a hemp cord. Tying it securely onto the hooks, he slid down, hands burning against the coarse fiber.

      The drop was about fifteen feet and the hole was cool and dank. He turned on the high beam and looked around.

      The room was a six-by-eight cell of almost-empty metal shelving. Scattered film canisters and video cassettes had been dumped onto the ground. Several yards of loose celluloid streamed across the floor.

      Bingo. Cecil’s warehouse.

      Two empty nylon bags fell from above.

      “I’m coming down,” Marge said. A moment later she dropped onto the floor.

      “The good news is this was his gold mine,” Decker said. “The bad news is he’s already stripped it of any real evidence.”

      “Here’s a filing cabinet,” Marge said, opening the top drawer.

      “Empty?”

      “Scraps,” Marge said, scanning them. “A few memos, his water and gas bills, a magazine subscription offer.” She began to stuff an empty tote. “I’ll take ’em, but I don’t suspect we’ll find much.”

      “Get a load of this, Marge,” Decker said, pointing to a typewriter-sized machine

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