Fur is Murder
WE WERE ALWAYS TREATED LIKE FAMILY BY THE BOSCHMANN’S. Then Mr. Stanley was found dangling from a hanger wearing a full-length mink coat in the vault of his family’s fur store. After that, we were back to being negroes. But worse. We were the kind who murdered rich white folks.
My Aunt Patty got me the job at Boschmann Furriers in 1948. She had been working for the family since before the war, raising Mr. Stanley’s kids and doing the housework for Mrs. Lillian his wife, though she liked to be called Lil. Said Lillian sounded too uppity. Once those kids grew up and went off to fight the Germans and then college, Mrs. Lil fired Aunt Patty. But Mr. Stanley wasn’t having that. He liked my aunt Patty, so he hired her to do the cleaning at their big fancy fur store in Beverly, one of Chicago’s real nice neighborhoods. Couple years later, Aunt Patty got Mr. Stanley to hire me to help her out with the store cleaning. Dusting, vacuuming, sweeping, wiping down the windows… you know, keeping the offices tidy and that showroom looking as pretty as the fur coats and hats and muffs they were selling. And boy! Was it a pretty showroom. There was always big fancy interior design magazines coming to photograph it and speak with Mrs. Lil about it because she was the one who orchestrated the decorating. Well, really, Uncle Stanley’s cousin Mr. Louis was the real brains behind all that beauty and their fashion shows and such, but Mr. Louis was too, well, how should I say this? He was a little too ladylike, and the family didn’t want to be embarrassed by the funny way he talked and walked around like he was always on a fashion runway. Never bothered me. He sure was one of the sweetest men I ever met.
I had just gotten married four months before going to work for the Boschmanns. On the last day of my second week, Mr. Stanley struck up some conversation with me as I was hanging up my coat about to punch in and get to work. He asked me about my husband—how we met, what he was like, what he did for a living. I told him all about how we grew up on the same block and were childhood sweethearts, that he was a funny man, always real sweet to everybody, but that he had been having trouble finding work on account of a bad knee. He was wounded in the war and every so often, his knee would act up and he would have terrible pain and it became real difficult to walk. He was a really strong man, strongest I’d ever seen, but when that knee gave out, it made him weak as a baby. When it happened, he’d take a steroid shot. Just pound a big-old needle right into his knee and in a few minutes, he was right as rain. But those shots were expensive and we didn’t always have money to keep one on hand.
Mr. Stanley understood our situation and he told me to tell my husband Ronnie to come in to the store the next day. If Mr. Stanley thought it was right, he’d give Ronnie a job right then and there. And that’s just what happened. My husband, Mr. Ronald F. Johnson, was the new porter for Boschmann Furriers. His job was to pick up coats for cleaning, repair, or storage, and deliver orders wherever they needed to go in the city, keep the store’s delivery truck shining from window to wheel, and take care of any other business Mr. Stanley asked him to do. It was a real statement to the character of not just Mr. Stanley, but the whole Boschmann family, that they allowed a black man like Ronnie to knock on the doors of their customers to deliver or pick up their coats worth more than he would earn in a year.
We were both so happy. So was Aunt Patty. And just like that, me and my family were employed by one of the richest, most respected families in Chicago, working at one of the most famous fur stores in the world. I remember thinking how proud my daddy would have been. Before he died, he told me, “Mae, you stay true to yourself, be good to folks. You’ll find that the lord’ll put you into a fine position in life.” Boy, was he right.
✶
BOSCHMANN FURRIERS BEGAN OVER IN ENGLAND IN 1856 by Mr. Stanley’s great-granddaddy. Story goes that Queen Victoria had asked him to design custom fur coats for her. After that, every Londoner with the means came knocking at great-granddaddy’s door. Word kept spreading and Americans began traveling to London just so they could purchase a Boschmann fur. Business got to be so good that by 1882, Mr. Stanley’s daddy came over to open a store in Chicago. When Mr. Stanley’s granddaddy died, the London store closed and all the business was coming out of Chicago. They even made a raccoon coat for President Theodore Roosevelt with the tails accenting the pockets. I seen the pictures.
Of course, I had never seen such nice clothing until I came to work there. Aunt Patty told me she had a friend who had a fur coat that she got as a gift from some married white man she was fooling around with. It wasn’t a Boschmann, but Aunt Patty said it was still nice. Silly though, considering they were living in Mississippi at the time, and Mississippi doesn’t have much of the fur coat kind of weather.
Working at Boschmann Furriers was like working at the Taj Mahal or something. It was just that regal. But it felt like home. Like I said, Mr. Louis was a wonderful man. So, too, was Mr. Stanley. And all of the other cousins, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, aunts, and uncles who worked there. Just about everyone was a Boschmann by some relation—blood or marriage. Anyone who wasn’t, you’d never know because everyone was treated with respect and shown kindness. Only me, Ronnie, and Aunt Patty stuck out because we were the only colored folks employed there. But just like everybody else, we were always invited to any weekend barbecues or birthday parties or weddings. Ronnie swears that half the store office was in the hospital waiting room when I gave birth to our first child, Darrell. They even paid both me and Ronnie a month’s pay to stay home and get used to having a baby around. Mr. Stanley hired his nephew to cover for Ronnie. Luckily, it was summer and the boy was home from college, so Ronnie’s job was safe. One of the secretaries, Ms. Leena who I think was the daughter of Mrs. Lil’s brother, helped Aunt Patty with the cleaning. Have you ever heard of such a thing?!
And that’s how it was for seven years. Just wonderful.
✶
IT WAS DECEMBER 1955 AND BOSCHMANN FURRIERS was about to celebrate its centennial. Not just that, but we were opening a new, bigger store with a bigger showroom, a state-of-the-art manufacturing shop, and two temperature-controlled cold-storage vaults, which was something no other furrier in the world had. The new store was located just a few blocks north of the original and had been under construction for two years. A lot of work and money had been put into it. Mr. Louis had gotten a man named Mr. George Nelson from a fancy design company called Herman Miller to handle all of the interior design and provide all of the furniture for the office and showroom. I am no fashion expert, but apparently, that was a real to-do. The big centennial celebration would coincide with the ribbon cutting of the new store two days before Christmas. Boschmann Furriers was getting a lot of attention from the press. It was all so exciting.
Three weeks before the big night, Mr. Stanley and Mrs. Lil took us all on a tour of the new place. It was unbelievable. If the old store was the Taj Mahal, this new one would be the envy of the Taj Mahal. After the tour, there was a small cocktail party for everyone. Ronnie and I had to leave early because we had left five-year-old Darrell and his new baby sister Caroline with a neighbor. We stayed for one drink then excused ourselves.
I was waiting just outside of the back entrance for Ronnie to pull the car around when I heard two folks arguing. I was never one to be nosey but it was bitter cold out and I just couldn’t believe any two folks would be fools enough to fight in three inches of snow and fourteen-degree weather. I peeked around the corner of the building and saw Mr. Stanley and Mrs. Lil going at it. I quickly ducked back around to my side of the building so they wouldn’t see me. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying but Mrs. Lil was not happy about something. And from what I saw, Mr. Stanley looked like he was about to blow his top completely. I was about to peek around the corner again when Ronnie pulled up in our 1953 Hudson—a gift from Mr. Stanley to me and Ronnie on the fifth anniversary of us working there.
I told Ronnie about what I had seen. He brushed it off. “Come on, Mae. I’m sure it’s nothing. Every married couple fights. They both got a lot going on, what with the new store and the one hundredth anniversary and all.”
I supposed he was right. It just seemed so strange to me.
The following week, our little Caroline got sick. Some kind of terrible ear infection. Treatment was draining our bank account pretty quickly. Mr. Stanley always gave out nice Christmas bonuses in cash but we needed money immediately and were afraid that the bonus wouldn’t cover the hospital bills we already had.
I was so upset. I knew Mr. Stanley—any of the Boschmanns, really—wouldn’t let us go broke, but my baby girl was in terrible pain, and both Ronnie and I hated to have to ask for help. Aunt Patty did what she could by way of tending to Caroline in the middle of the night so I could get some sleep, though I still had to get up to nurse the poor thing. It took some convincing, but I finally got Ronnie to ask Mr. Stanley for a raise. We didn’t want a favor. We were happy pinching pennies to pay for Caroline’s doctors and medicine, we just wanted a little more money in our weekly paychecks so that we could do so. Things like the Hudson and getting paid to stay home with the new babies was wonderful, but Ronnie hadn’t had a pay increase in all his time working at Boschmann Furriers. Neither had I, but I figured he had a better chance of getting a raise than I did. Everyone was always saying how my Ronnie was going above and beyond, and I was always hearing about how the customers would call or write a letter saying how wonderfully sweet and professional Ronnie was to them. My husband had value, and since the business was growing, it was time for Ronnie’s paycheck to grow, too.
Things being as busy as they were leading up to the centennial and ribbon cutting, plus Christmastime being the busy season anyway, Ronnie had trouble finding time to meet with Mr. Stanley. Finally, after scheduling and rescheduling with Mr. Stanley’s secretary—Ms. Violet, a second cousin—he was able to meet in his big office upstairs next to the shop and the elevator. The meeting was scheduled right after lunch the day before the big event.
As he stepped off the elevator onto the second floor, he told me he heard Mr. Stanley and Mrs. Lil yelling. Just as he turned the corner and headed toward the office, Mrs. Lil came storming out, blowing right past him not saying a word. Mr. Stanley called at Ronnie.
“Ronnie! You out there? Come on in, son.”
Ronnie said Mr. Stanley explained that he and Mrs. Lil were fighting over her firing Mr. Louis that morning. Said Mrs. Lil shouldn’t have done that but she was upset because he was quoted in Harper’s Bazaar and she wasn’t. Said the stress of the party and store opening was getting to her. Or so Ronnie told me. Ronnie also told me that Mr. Stanley sympathized with his request for a raise but that money cash was tight because of the new store and the party and what-not. He wanted to give Ronnie a raise—both of us, actually—but it would have to wait until next year once things evened out a bit. He did give Ronnie three hundred dollars in cash to tide us over. Said it wasn’t a loan. Wasn’t even part of the Christmas bonus. It was a personal gift from his pocket to ours. “Because that’s what family does.” Or so Ronnie told me.
✶
I WAS SAD TO MISS THE BIG CELEBRATION THAT NEXT DAY. I had to stay home with Caroline and Darrell, which, is always where I’d had preferred to be—with my babies. I only wish that Caroline hadn’t been so ill. Ronnie wanted to stay home with us but I insisted he go. One of us had to be there. He came around to see things my way, but while shoveling off the walkway, his knee gave out completely. He collapsed right there in the snow wearing his best suit. I heard him hollering, so I put the baby down and ran outside to help him up. Normally, I’d have given him one of those steroid shots but we didn’t have any. He had to use the last one three weeks ago and hadn’t had a chance to get to his doctor to pick up a new one. Plus, all of our money was needed for Caroline’s treatment. The tables had turned. I was now the one suggesting he stay home.
“Not going to happen, Mae,” he told me, squeezing my hand and through gritted teeth. “You have enough sickness to tend to here. And one of us needs to be at that ribbon cutting. I’ll be fine.”
So he hobbled out to the car. Little Darrell did his best to shovel the rest of the path for his daddy. It made me cry.
✶
RONNIE DIDN’T WAKE ME WHEN HE GOT HOME THAT NIGHT. It was the police banging on our door the next morning that woke us all. Darrell and Caroline screaming, me and Ronnie half dazed and completely confused. I went to the babies; Ronnie answered the door. I recognized the policeman’s voice right away.
Officer Sweeney worked the beat where Boschmann Furriers was located. If six-blocks could have their own mayor, Officer Sweeney was it. He knew everyone and everyone knew him. He was always walking along the sidewalks, tipping his hat to anyone he passed—white and colored folks. He stopped in to just about every store there was and knew every single employee at each one. Not just their names but their kids’ names, too. As far as I was concerned, Officer Sweeney was the best cop the city had. Probably the best cop in the country. I mean, you find me a white, Irish police officer who’s going to remember a colored family’s kids’ names like he did ours.
As loved as we were by the Boschmann’s, we were still a negro family and had to live in the negro part of town. This part of town was not Officer Sweeney’s beat. He being at our door to arrest my Ronnie was strictly a courtesy. At some point during all the celebration, Mr. Stanley had been murdered. Stabbed in the throat three times. Another four times in the chest and seventeen times in his crotch. I nearly dropped Caroline as Officer Sweeney gave us more details while the other cops escorted Ronnie back to our bedroom so he could get dressed before they slapped cuffs on him.
After being stabbed, the murderer placed him in a full-length black mink coat and hung him up in the large new air-conditioned vault. It was entirely empty except for Mr. Stanley who apparently died from loss of blood, which had pooled beneath his dangling feet. The murder weapon was found in the blood puddle. It was a large pair of shears with fur-covered handles. The Boschmanns liked to use scraps of fur to cover just about anything. Pens, letter openers, staplers, bottle openers, scissors… But these shears were special. They were the ones used to cut the ribbon at the start of the event.
As the local cops hauled my Ronnie off, I asked Officer Sweeney how this was possible.
“Why Ronnie?” I asked.
“He’s got motive and access, Mae.”
“Motive?”
“We know he asked Mr. Boschmann for a raise the other day. And we know he was rejected. Look, I understand. Your baby girl is sick. You need money. A man has to provide for his family and—”
“No! You stop it right there, Officer Sweeney. Mr. Stanley said the raise would come sometime next year. And he gave us three hundred dollars cash to help out.”
“Yes. About that… Mrs. Boschmann is claiming Ronnie stole that money.”
“What!?”
I wasn’t buying any of it. Something was wrong. Ronnie had been framed.
I called Aunt Patty to come and watch the babies while I went to the police station. When she got to our place, she could barely stand or talk she was so distraught. I would have preferred to have joined her in her mourning of Mr. Stanley, but I had a husband being wrongfully accused to focus on. From the police station, I called Mrs. Lil. I tried her at home. When she didn’t pick up, I tried the store. Nothing. This was all a huge misunderstanding, I knew it. We needed a lawyer. But I knew that if a negro man was going to be charged with the murder of a prominent, rich, beloved white man, we were up a creek without a paddle. No one would help us. Unless we could get one of those Boschmann lawyers. But without Mrs. Lil answering the phone, there was no way that was happening.
I sat at the police station all day. They wouldn’t let me see or speak to Ronnie. Officer Sweeney hung around, which I thought was both odd and kind at the same time. He was careful to take care of me, bringing me water and coffee and occasionally sitting next to me, patting my knee telling me it was going to be alright. But there was something disingenuous about all of it. Like he knew something I didn’t.
I finally tucked myself into bed around ten o’clock. Of course, I couldn’t sleep. My husband was behind bars, my wonderful boss had just been murdered, my aunt was still a blubbering mess, and my Boschmann family was unreachable. I was adrift in uncertainty. I was terrified. And I got to thinking…
I thought about the way Mr. Stanley was found. There was no way Ronnie could have done that—hang Mr. Stanley in a mink coat on a hanger. Not that he ever would have but on that night it would have been physically impossible. His knee had given out. He was barely able to walk. He wouldn’t have been able to lift Caroline much less a one hundred-eighty-pound dead man. And all of those stab wounds in Mr. Stanley’s crotch. My daddy was a detective in our little Mississippi town. He investigated a lot of murders. Most of them white folks killing black folks. But he talked about it a lot with me late at night after he’d had a go at the whiskey bottle. I remember being really troubled by how the way someone was killed informed why they were killed. It got me thinking that seventeen stab wounds to the crotch compared with three stabs to the neck and four to the chest sounded like someone was upset with what Mr. Stanley was doing with his crotch. And I thought about the fight I saw between him and Mrs. Lil. And then about the arguing Ronnie heard between them the day of his meeting. It got me thinking that Mrs. Lil was behind this.
✶
FIRST THING THAT NEXT MORNING, I dressed the babies and ran them over to Aunt Patty’s. I was shocked to see a police squad car sitting outside of her building. I rang the buzzer.
“Yes?” the voice said. It wasn’t my aunt’s.
“Aunt Patty. It’s Mae. With the babies.”
The intercom went silent. I buzzed again.
Nothing.
Again.
Finally, the door lock buzzed open and I nearly ripped it off its hinges pulling it open. I ran up the three flights to Aunt Patty’s apartment two stairs at a time with one kid under each arm. I expected her door to be open but it was locked. I knocked. Hard.
“Aunt Patty!”
The deadbolt turned. The chain lock dropped. The door slowly creaked open.
It was a straight shot of about thirty feet from the doorway to Aunt Patty’s living room. She was seated on the couch. I could see the red lines in her eyes and the bags weighing them down before stepping foot inside. She looked at me with horror. Perhaps it was fear. Probably shame. I stepped inside and let Darrell out of my clutch to better run to my aunt’s aid.
Once inside the apartment, I saw why getting into her place was so strange. Sitting in the lounge chairs across from Aunt Patty were Mrs. Lil and Officer Sweeney. His gun was drawn and pointed at Aunt Patty.
“I’m sorry,” Aunt Patty wept.
“For what? What’s going on here?” I asked, grabbing Darrell again and pulling him as close to me as I could without smooshing him into and through my thigh.
“They say you can never find a cop when you need one,” Mrs. Lil said. “But if your husband is screwing the black cleaning lady, a cop is always right there.” She delicately caressed his gun hand with her long fingers.
“We’re in love,” Officer Sweeney said.
“You are. Not me,” Mrs. Lil said to Officer Sweeney.
“But you’ll learn to love me, right?” he asked.
Mrs. Lil ignored him. “Your wonderful, beautiful Aunt Patty here had a taste for the vanilla,” she said. “She’s been screwing my husband since my kids were in diapers. And I’ve had enough of it. Would you believe he was going to leave me!? That’s what he said, anyway. Right after I fired that homo cousin of his. Negroes and gays… Those were the people my husband—the great Stanley Boschmann—wanted to surround himself with. He didn’t think for one second what would have happened to this family and this business if it got out he was screwing the black cleaning lady and letting a homo design his store. I ignored it long enough. But with all the publicity on the centennial and the new store… And with this old hag telling him she’s pregnant with his child! Ha!”
“Aunt Patty?” I barely breathed. If it was true, it was a miracle baby for sure. Aunt Patty was barren. Had been as long as I’d known her. And she was no spring chicken.
“I’m sorry we had to bring you into this, Mae,” Mrs. Lil said. “But really, blame Patty here. She’s the one who brought you and Ronnie to us.” She looked straight into Aunt Patty’s eyes.
“You’d all have been better off if you’d stayed in your negro slums. But you destroyed my family, you harlot. And so I’ve destroyed yours.”
“Lillian,” Officer Sweeney squeaked. “You told me you loved me.”
“Not now, dammit.”
“That’s what this is?” I said. The three sitting down seemed surprised I was still there. “Aunt Patty was having an affair with Mr. Stanley, and Officer Sweeney helped Mrs. Lil murder him? That it?”
“Smart and pretty. Unlike your aunt here who’s only good for one thing and is too stupid to know what that one thing is,” Mrs. Lil said.
I slowly backed out of the room, back down the hallway and out of the door. All along keeping my Caroline close to my chest and Darrell at my side. The tears welled up in my eyes. I didn’t know what to make of it. The three of us hurried down the stairs and headed toward the police station. I hoped that they would believe me and arrest Mrs. Lil and Officer Sweeney. Most importantly, I hoped they’d release my Ronnie.
As I made my first imprint in the fresh snow on the sidewalk, I heard a gunshot. Then I heard my aunt scream. Darrell started crying. Caroline hadn’t stopped since we left our apartment. I froze in my tracks. Mrs. Lil walked out of the building. Her long sable fur coat draped over her shoulders. She walked past me as her black Buick Skylark pulled up to the curb. Mr. Louis was driving. He got out and walked around to open the passenger door for Mrs. Lil. Our eyes met. He looked terribly sad.
Mrs. Lil stopped just before getting into the car and said to me, “He’s a terrible designer. But he makes a great driver.” She smiled and slid in to her seat. Mr. Louis closed her door.
“I’m so, so sorry,” he said to me. He returned to the driver’s side and took his seat.
Mrs. Lil rolled down her window. “Don’t bother coming back to work, dear. I’ll send you a few month’s severance. Plus a little extra for all this trouble. After all, I can’t imagine how hard it must be having a husband in jail for murdering a prominent businessman and an aunt in jail for killing a policeman investigating the case. Take care, Mae. I always liked you.”
“I’m going to police.”
“Go ahead. As if they’d believe you—a negro woman with a murderous husband.” She started to roll her window up. “If you ever need a good fur, you know where to go. We’ll always take care of you. You’re family, after all.”
